


The Inseparate Sky

by Anecdoche (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Content Warnings in Chapter Notes, Explicit Sexual Content, Eye Trauma, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-sidelined Daisira! Because they deserve attention too!, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Basira, Protective Martin, Sexual Content, Stargazing, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Tragedy, Trans Male Character, Various OCs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:41:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 78,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23531752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/Anecdoche
Summary: One of them sprawls upon the floor, wearing a wicked grin.One stands triumphant but still woefully starved for victory.Both of them are bleeding.Both of them are failing to See.-Jon tasks himself with saving the world.After all, it had to be him.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Jonathan Sims, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonah Magnus & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood & Basira Hussain, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 42
Kudos: 53





	1. shadows, on the place we left

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is completed save the final chapter, and chapters will post every 3-4 days, depending. Content warnings will be posted at the end notes of each chapter, so please mind those. Do please let me know if you've enjoyed reading this, I love hearing back <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for Content Warnings

_It has to be me._

How many times has he said this? In protest to the stubborn refusals of his comrades. To Martin and his pleading eyes. For the sake of his own terrified heart, pounding in his chest at the mere _thought_ of confronting Magnus. And how many times has he been convinced otherwise? By Daisy and her raucous talk of stealth approaches and sneak attacks. By Martin, and his gentle sighs as they hold each other, _know_ each other, in the throes of an apocalypse and their own, tentative closeness. 

And by himself, as he tallies the ones worth doing this for, and _not_ doing this for. 

The hopefuls, the cowering, the fearsome, the fearful. The friends. The so-suddenly-more-than-a-friend. The ones worth everything, and who would throw themselves upon the Watcher’s pyre before seeing him supplicate to Magnus’s will.

But he can’t see that, he _won’t_ , and he argues this, raves himself hoarse to seemingly deaf ears, to all of those who he can save but who will not hear the solution. 

And so, if reason will not find its root in them, he will supplant the refusal outright. 

It’s odd, really, how well Jon has come to lie - poetic, Martin might say, were he privy to this, but the whole point is that he is _not_. 

To lying. 

To untruths. 

Despite the beast Jon has brought into this world, there still smolders a deception that is _his_ and is _not_ known. When he has time for such menial things as self reflection, he ponders this, not at great length, but enough to decide that, as a former (albeit unwitting) acolyte, he must serve now as a sort of antithesis, an obscurity to the splay of pupil and iris and _drinks-it-all-in_ overhead.

It’s this he tells himself, _assures_ himself, as he tries not to think of those he has yoked under the weight of his lie. As he approaches the gutted pit of the Institute grounds - the sinkhole that collapsed the building entirely leaving only the panopticon for a pupil in its scleral maw - he cannot think of friends, cannot think of Martin. As individuals, as distinct entities of his love and frustration and hope, they are a danger to him, threatening to pull him from the crumbling edge, keeping him complacent, keeping him safe from what must - be - _done_. 

As an amalgam, though - an entirety - they are easier to contend with, a singular _thing_ in his heart’s eye, urging him on to complete this impossible task, _making_ it possible by virtue of all that they mean to him and all there will still be _to_ mean. After. Together.

But here. Now. At the precipice of awful knowledge, he is only himself. As it must be. 

And it is. Just _is_ . Yawning before him, open and wounded, the start of _all_ of this slaughtered to rubble and detritus. And the terrible parasite it hid for so long stands triumphant - aglow with its own purpose, colorless and sickly, a beacon of the awful, evil thing lurking inside. 

There, in the guard tower, Magnus is. And there, Jon must be, too. To end this. To end _all_ of this. 

The distant howl of a Hunter carries over from his left, followed by the distinct, rippling growl of another beast keen for its own sake of Slaughter. The final sliver of reservation within Jon begs for him to confront the frenzy that is certain to occur, to _know_ the beasts that tear and gnash each other and coax them to placidity. Make them comatose, yes, but docile and unafflicted by the things that haunt them. But he hasn’t time for that. 

With Daisy’s own prowess, his friends won’t be far behind. If he doesn’t act now, he may never have another chance, at least with so little risk. 

So, with a heart barely contained by what few ribs he still possesses, he steadies himself, steels what resolve yet remains, and begins his treacherous descent.

-

He suspected much of what might transpire, but expected very little. Neither approach, however, has prepared him for just how… simple it is to scale the guts of the Institute. Not until he wavers at the base of the guard tower - breathless if only for the veneer of exertion - does it quite register just _how_ easy that was. Like someone _made_ it so. Like he’s being welcomed

Suddenly, _sickly_ , deep to the very pit of his soul, he wants to turn back, to scrabble over the edge and find the hands waiting for him, waiting to pull him out of the dirt again, steadfast and real, anchoring him in the relentless tide of his own hubris, his _penance_.

But he did this. And he has to fix. And he is so, _so_ scared.

And he can’t go back. He knows this. Just as he knows he will scale the steps of the tower before him. Knows he will face the terror inside. _Knows_ , with the conviction of blood rising to bruised flesh, that he will fight to his last breath to ensure the safety of this world, of his friends, of Martin. 

And he hopes - despite the sheer stupidity of such a thing in this unforgiving wasteland - that he will succeed.

So he doesn’t go back, doesn’t seek the hands, the anchors. 

And he presses on, up the stairs of the tower, ascending to the blinding illumination barely contained within the bowels of this wretched place, that horrible, vicious _Knowing_ emanating from Magnus. 

Jon suspected he would be expected. Even his best efforts to dissuade the prying of Magnus’s eyes would, on occasion, find themselves flagging. Evidently, his descent taxed him more than he realized, and as he mounts the final step, Magnus’s riddling, devouring gaze abruptly permeates him, strips his core blind with white, freezing agony. 

He doesn’t deign to scream. Distantly, in the last vestiges of his coherence beyond _pain, so much pain_ , he fears this will expose himself to those he is only trying to keep safe, to those he must _save_ , to those he must endure this for. To those he _owes_ this.

And it is _excruciating_.

And then it is not.

He sprawls forward, arms outstretched, his palms crashing to the harsh floor of the decrepit tower as the door to its chamber gives way. He braces for an assault, for Magnus to descend upon him, for his mind to cleave in two at the sheer onslaught of _Inside You And Seeing All_. But none of this greets him. There is only the floor, the scratched, sticky blood on his wounded hands, the bruise of his pride, and… a low, baritone chuckle: amusement he has not heard in months save for when his nightmares watch him back.

Now, he is _watched_ , properly, loomed over by eyes the piercing hue of a triumphant hypothermia. 

“And so my prodigal Archive returns,” says the owner of the eyes, the _thief_ of the body that is not his while his true form lays by the wayside, dormant and dessicated.

For how little he’s actually planned this, Jon has even less footing for a response, but he does manage to gather enough of his bearings to scramble to his feet and back away, stanced for a fight he has no chance of winning. But he doesn’t need to win. Not quite. Not _just_ -

“Oh, but I’m so glad you’re here,” Magnus says, throwing wide his arms as if to embrace the awful entirety of _here_.

“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me. Or - _ah_ \- still harbored resentments over our little _misunderstanding_.”

“As if this is just some _row_?” Spits Jon, knowing full well he’s being goaded, but dammit if he can’t help rising to the bait. He’s wanted this for so long: an audience with this baleful excuse of a corpse. And if acting the part of unwitting acolyte is what Magnus wants, then Jon will play his bow strings till they strangle him. 

“Using me to catalyze your little kingdom,” he continues, hands turning to fists in his fury. “Like, what, this is some sort of _domestic_?”

“If you prefer,” grins Magnus, and Jon has never seen glee infected by _such_ cruelty. The face of Elias Bouchard almost can’t contain it.

“So… what, now?” Jon scoffs, sensing a stalemate, tasting a _chance_ if he keeps Magnus talking.

“Oh I haven’t a clue, my dear Archive,” Magnus throws out the epithet like it’s waste paper - sounds _bored_ , even. “I’m thrilled you’re here, but I’m even more delighted to see what you make of this.”

Jon swallows thickly, weighing his options.

“And what if I said I was here to kill you,” he says at length, plainly, face schooled to an impregnable neutrality he has mastered these past months, for when he needs to confront others under particular duress of Beholding. 

Magnus sighs, shaking his head.

“Then I would tell you that is _terribly_ predictable, and I am not keen on such things anymore. Our god provides me plentiful _everything_ , after all.”

Abruptly, Magnus is no longer stood those meager few feet away, nor is Jon facing him. Now, a _sing_ of heated pain lances up his spine, his cheek, his shoulder, as he’s shoved face first to the cold, metal wall, his arm pinned, with Magnus’s knee digging into the backs of his own, effectively immobilizing him. 

“I _have_ everything, _my_ _Archive_ ” Magnus growls in his ear. “What do you have that is _nothing_.”

It isn’t a question, but the sibilant sting of Compulsion trickles along Jon’s vertebrae, around his throat, through the flaring synapses of his fight or flight, confusing it, utterly.

“I - I -”

_\- have so much_ , says the best part of Jon’s fragile conscience, the straggling bits of humanity he’s nursed in spite of the monstrous things he’s had to do. _I have everything that is not yours and never will be yours, and it is mine, and I - am not -_ **_yours_ ** _._

There’s a gasp, a punched out shard of breath, and Jon’s vision clears - _when had it whited out?_ \- to reveal Magnus, again, staggering away as Jon whirls around to face him, his brutal, frostbitten eyes thawing with rage and maniacal joy. 

“ _Oh_ ,” Magnus says. Wistfully. _Fondly_. “I see.”

Jon just stares.

And then he growls.

And when Magnus leers again, he lunges.

_______________________________________________

Like a willow reed to the oak-felling maelstrom, they have - somehow, _impossibly_ \- survived.

Despite. _In_ spite. Denying everything that should bring them certain, torturous demise. 

But as little as they were prepared for The Amaranthine Observer- as Martin likes to call it - or the “Everything’s gone to shit” - as Daisy prefers - the Watcher and its hordes have found themselves similarly thwarted by these vexingly tenacious survivors. Though always outnumbered, they persist with terrifying ferocity and cunning, carving out an existence for themselves in the eye of this beastly world.

Because it takes more than a pulsing throng of animated Flesh or the dislocated tactics of the Spiral’s favored tithes to throw them off their game. A Son Of Puppets came close, but only because he snared them after a rather nasty run in with the Dark. It was Martin who eventually restrained him, and Jon took care of the rest, untangling his Statement like barbed wire. Hopefully, when this is all over, the Son will reawaken and feel nothing of the strings that sutured his bones. But none of them are sure. None of them know what there will be left. 

And none of them knew how to achieve that. 

Until now.

Until their carefully meager encampment wakes to a dawn devoid of their watcher, and too quickly does it _dawn_ what it is he has done. 

They’d been discussing this. Martin, Daisy, Basira, Jon: the ones closest to this, the catalysts, as Jon so ruefully likes to refer to them. It was obvious enough, from the start, that Magnus needed to die, but what began as merely a plot for revenge soon unspooled to reveal a very plausible, very _dangerous_ sedition. 

For, to kill a Favored is not so simple an undertaking as a bullet between the eyes. Votaries are to their patrons as a marrow thick bone is to the eager teeth of a starving man: durable but, ultimately, an easy prize. Avatars, however, especially of Magnus’s standing, require more nuance, the only certainty being that their death must adhere to set iconographies - _symbologies_. Never let it be said the Fears are subtle - save the Web, of course, but even She has her tells. And they’ve known the Eye’s weakness since the first murmurs of conspiracy rose in the fretful mouths of the Institute’s unsuspecting congregants. 

So it was simple, _so_ simple, to conclude that Jonah Magnus would need to be blinded. What muddied the plot, however, was Jon’s insistence that it had to be him who did it. _Only_ him. He argued, he lashed out, he cried in vain to try and explain to his friends, to Martin, that he alone must do this, that only he could withstand Magnus’s power, the tortures he would inflict. 

It was a poor approach, and Jon’s pleas only cemented the opposing conviction. Daisy’s voice was the loudest, her glare feral and steadfast, till Jon paled and conceded. Later, he let Martin hold him, kiss him, beg him through tears to never say those things again, to never think they would throw him to the lion’s den. 

And it all was for nothing. 

Because he’s gone. And they know exactly where he’s gone _to_.

“We have to go after him.”

It’s the first coherent thing Martin manages to say after exhausting himself in a blind panic of half-heaved sobs and near fistfuls of hair pulled frantically from his head.

“ _Stupid_ martyr bastard,” agrees Daisy, her face a mask of cold anger, though her bottom lip betrays her stoicism slightly. 

They’re huddled in her tent, Martin having barely stumbled inside (and barely avoided the snooping glare of several overhead eyes) before unleashing his tirade and nearly alerting the entire camp. She’s of the lucky few who staked out one of the still standing flats, though, so it afforded some distortion to the string of curses she snarled in response.

“It’s - it’s six hours walk, at least,” Martin continues rationalizing. “Do you think we can head him off?”

Just then, Basira - having done a round through the camp to make sure no one else has taken notice of Jon’s absence, and that no Others have taken notice of them - shuffles back in beneath the duvet hung where the flat’s west wall once stood. 

“We’re good,” she says stonily. “And no. He’s almost definitely gotten there by now. You said you last saw him ‘bout half ten last night?”

Even with the looming threat of Magnus and whatever things he could do to Jon, Martin still manages to blush and cough into his hand.

“Er, yeah, little bit later. We - ah.”

“Fell asleep?” Finishes Daisy. Her face reveals nothing but pointed suspicion and latent anger, but Martin coughs again.

“Yeah.”

“Then he’s definitely there,” says Basira. “So you have to go. _Now_.”

“What about -” begins Martin, but Daisy jumps suddenly to her feet, so fast he gives an indignant yelp.

“Right, you stay here,” she says, “make sure no one tries anything stupid while we’re gone, yeah?”

“And you slap some sense into Jon before you drag his sorry ass back here,” Basira replies. 

Martin very much wants to point out there’s no need for such aggression, but as an errant ray of weak daylight filters into the flat - the sun hasn’t been seen properly for months - it catches on Basira’s face and reveals her cheeks are shining, damp and ruddy, and she’s visibly struggling not to blink. 

Wordlessly, Martin rises to his own feet, gives Daisy a nudge as he sidles by, and leaves them to sort out their strange brand of affection. The sounds of muffled crying and gentle reassurances follow after him as he picks his way over to his own part of the camp, following the route of strategically erected rubble that, more or less, veins the camp’s main hubs, though most foot traffic involves stealthy dashes too and from the prying sky’s periphery. It’s clear now, though, insofar as the sky is clear, anymore. It still roils with sickly, ravaged cloud cover that has yet to reveal any sort of predictability as to when a cluster of pupils decides to manifest and bear down onto whatever unfortunate is caught beneath their glower. They’ve taken the ambiguity out of it with their makeshift overhangs and tunnels of gutted buses, and no one’s been picked off in quite some time. 

In the wake of his departure from Daisy’s tent, Martin finds a strange moment of calm settling upon him, the dense dread in his heart softening. That is, until he dashes into his tent and sees the cot there is still empty. He takes a long moment just to stare, willing this all to be some trick of the Spiral, the worst of his nightmares made just briefly manifest. When this proves a fruitless endeavor, he sinks down on the edge of the cot, its emptiness more readily available to him that way, making the tears come faster, another quick catharsis before he gingerly pulls himself together and sets about preparing for the journey ahead. 

All of them, everyone in the camp, is to have an evacuation bag prepped in the event of an unexpected attack, and it’s this Martin digs out from under the cot, slings around his shoulders, and holds steadfastly to: a tangible tether of proactivity. Jon has hardly left Martin’s side, let alone had enough time to surreptitiously assemble a abandon-my-friends-and-take-on-Magnus-alone bag. So perhaps he hasn’t made it as far as Basira thinks. Or perhaps this has just made it all the more dangerous, Jon completely exposing himself to the vicious elements, to Magnus.

He can’t think like that. What the hell does it do? What does it solve? All that matters is him and Daisy and _going-after-that-idiot-and-maybe-possibly-letting-Basira-smack-him-but-only-maybe_ . He laughs at that, to himself, because he might go insane with fear, otherwise, and wouldn’t that just be _poetic_? For all the monsters and horrors he’s battled, of course the worst thing to do him in would be his own stupid, bleeding heart.

Wallowing in his tent isn’t helping, either. Nor is slouching - curling into himself almost fetally - where he and Jon… well, that isn’t helping _either_ , and surely Daisy is ready by now. 

Sure enough, as he pulls in a grounding breath and re-emerges from his tent, he spots her - impassive as ever - making her way over and definitely _not_ rubbing at her eyes. She’s equipped with her own pack, and gives Martin a solemn nod as she comes to a bristling halt about a foot away. 

They crouch together beneath the warped metal of an exit sign, making brief reconnaissance. 

“It’ll help if I track,” Daisy says slowly, with the growing timbre of a growl in her throat. “Can get us there faster, if you don’t mind me carrying you, of course.”

Martin blanches, “If you think I’m letting you risk yourself like that…”

Jon or not, he _refuses_ to stand by and let Daisy submit herself to uncertain ferocity. 

“You’re not that hea-”

“You _know_ what I mean,” Martin cuts in. 

“And _you_ know,” Daisy snarls back, “that I could break both your legs and leave you here while I go fetch your idiot boyfriend. So either shut up and let me do this, Blackwood, or start preparing splints.”

Martin’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cower, so he does both, though he succeeds better with the latter, and the laugh is more strangled disbelief than amicable amusement. 

“Good,” says Daisy, without Martin actually consenting. “Settled then. You better step back a few, m’bit riled over this, and I can’t promise I won’t rip your throat out.”

Martin stares sadly at her, his heart too exhausted to pretend he’s even remotely okay with this.

“That’s not funny, Daisy.”

Daisy’s face belies nothing, but she can’t meet his gaze fully as she says, “I know. Now move, I’ll only be a minute.”

She steps a few healthy yards away, and as she crouches to the ground, Martin turns away.

When they regroup, she does not comment on his puffy red eyes, nor does he flinch at the blood trickling from her nose. The silent pact seals itself between them, and, hoisting their packs in unison, they turn their attention to the West, where, somewhere, the Institute waits.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Daisy says, as they steel themselves and step out from under the protection of their pathetic little camp.

Martin takes a moment to acclimate, to submit his presence to the eyes above. They’re more accommodating to placidity, and he’s learned how best not to provoke them. They could hardly spend the trip ducking under awnings or navigating the Tube, after all.

“Okay,” he says finally, and takes Daisy’s proffered hand.

But none of it is. None.

-

They’re an hour away from the Institute when the sky changes, and a brand new hell breaks loose. 

It’s as though something has jabbed fully awake the billion eyed beast lurking in the heavens, each and every cloud splitting apart with a cacophonous _rip_ and _scream_ and _Stare_ and _Seethe_ and _See See See Let Us See_. 

_Jon_.

Martin’s not sure who says this, him or Daisy. Could be both, could be neither, could just be the fucking _sky_ pulling the desperation straight from their minds, but it’s there, the name, shooting adrenaline straight through them both. 

There’s nothing else to say after that, just the spur of action as Daisy - bristling all over - falls abruptly to all fours, her limbs, torso, her entire body rippling and distorting to brutal proportions that nearly shreds her clothes. With a singular, deft swipe of her now razor clawed hands, she throws Martin atop her back and surges forward at breakneck speed, blood and saliva flowing freely from her face and mouth, leaving strands of foamy pink streaming behind her. Martin - stunned, horrified, _helpless_ \- can do little else but flatten himself against her back, both to avoid the flying spittle and the prying shrieks of the eyes above, and also because he can’t do anything fucking else.

Well, he can cry. _Is_ crying. He knows that much. _That_ is his, and he clings to it with great sobs as Daisy tears recklessly onward, as the sky tears at itself. Numbly, he worries - stupidly, _bleedingly_ \- that they’re going to attract attention, that something is going to get to them before they can get to Jon, before they can stop this, save him - _please please don’t let this be it, please don’t be too late_ , _I need you to be okay, I need you I need you I need -_

He shrieks, indignantly, all at once toppling from Daisy’s back in a bruised and battered tangle of himself at - at -

“Oh _Christ_ ,” he whimpers.

They’re here, at what could be, for all that remains, the edge of the damn world. And for the sake of whatever poet still remains in Martin’s battered, depleted soul, it could be, truly. For all the years suffered there, all the people he grew to despise and pity and love and fear. For all the ways he changed, stagnated, changed again, it was all he knew for so long. To see it like this, the Institute, brought to its knees - it’s so…

Good. 

_So_ good. 

And - and freeing. And _fucking_ beautiful, so much so that he half forgets why he’s here in the first place, _who_ it is he’s here for.

Just then, above, a thick, bulbous red iris turns on him, on _them_ : Hunter and friend shuddering together. It throbs, the eye - _writhes_ \- undulations behind its sclera pushing out and back in, formless shapes engorging it, retracting, repeating in putrescent repetition. Till a mucousy seam bubbles up, _bursts_ , and the grotesque watching _thing_ tears thickly apart into a thousand, million capillaries, veining the sky with vitreous vapor.

The sound. The sight. It beats the air clean from Martin’s chest in a single shout, and Daisy crumples beside him, her body collapsing into itself with dangerous rapidity as adrenaline takes its toll, but there’s no time to care about that right now, about her, or himself or - or

_But Jon._

As pseudo-tangible gore streaks from the sky, Martin struggles to his elbows, then his palms, then his knees, too, and crawls for the edge of the pitted out Institute. At its center, as he stares, stupefied, into the gaping wound of pavement and brick, something is crumbling. And he realizes it's panopticon’s tower. And he knows where Jon is.

His mouth barely has a second to form a distraught scream before the tower buckles in on itself and careens to the left, a thousand seams shattering its masonry, sending the glass of its observation deck spewing out in shards, its metal scaffolding screeching like no monster he’s yet heard. With a resounding, _final_ crash, it makes impact with the ground, kicking up a vicious cloud of debris-riddled dust, obscuring the corpse-like monument in a plume of its own defeat.

“ _...no_ ,” it’s the first and only word out of Martin’s mouth before he’s on his feet and all but throwing himself down the pit. 

_Jon Jon Jon_ , pants his mind, numbly, so distant and torn from himself, following only the reckless pace of his movements as he disregards all scratches and bruises and cuts. He has to get to Jon. He has to find him. He is there. He is _still_ there.

Above him, a melancholy howl floats limply from something wounded. 

Daisy.

Shit.

He - he can’t go back. He’s almost _there_ \- (he isn’t, really, not at the rate of his ineffectual clambering) - but… but he can’t. He _can’t_.

The pained sounds grow blessedly quieter as his breaths grow louder, more strained, starved of proper air, but his purpose drives him on, blinds him to anything that isn’t immediately _Jon_ and _saving Jon_.

Which is how he rather _yelps_ when at last he reaches the relative bottom of the pit and regains enough of his peripheral sense to recall what the _fuck_ has happened to the sky. 

_Symbologies_ , provides his oxygen-starved brain, unhelpfully, as he takes in the lacrimal massacre spidering through itself. It seems… only that one eye has suffered so spectacularly, but the others still lurking amongst the cloud cover aren’t wholly unscathed. Many of them, as Martin watches - transfixed with disgust - are swelling up, sealing over with crusty, half-skin-half- _something-else_ lids, their capillaries blown wide or ruptured entirely in great splatter shots of burst vessels.

It’s as one - hazel and bloody - turns to him, its form weeping steadily, that Martin remembers what he’s doing, and as the vile thing focuses in - widens like it’s surprised to see him - Martin catches something in the corner of his own eye, a wavering silhouette emerging from the carnage of the tower.

He believes it - _exactly_ what he sees, he believes. He will not allow for doubt, for the possibility of his grief addled mind to be playing his heartstrings. 

It’s Jon. _There’s_ Jon. Battered, limping, shakily tying the torn sleeve of his shirt around the left half of his face. But it’s Jon. _Jon Jon Jon Jon_.

“You - you did it,” Martin breathes, like he’s never before known relief. “Jon, you _really_ did it, Christ, oh my g-”

He’s half tripping half racing over rubble before he can even finish. And it’s Jon, there, right in front of him, and then in his arms, sagging against him, knees giving way, his back bowing like he can’t press himself close enough to Martin. Their awkward angle forces Martin to guide them to the ground where they kneel together, holding so tightly to each other, faces buried in the familiar warmth of each other’s necks and shoulders, then their cheeks, till, finally, they find enough composure to part. But Martin can’t bear any such space between them, and, gently cupping Jon’s jaw in his calloused, aching hands, he lifts Jon’s face to his own and presses a soft, insistent kiss to his lips. 

“I thought I lost you,” Martin murmurs weepily against his mouth. “You bloody, _stupid_ idiot, I thought you were _gone_.”

“M’not,” Jon manages to say before Martin succumbs to the ache of not-kissing-him, and shuts him up with a proper snog.

“Don’t you _ever_ do this again,” Martin says when he finally relents and allows Jon to pull a shaky inhale.

“Doubt… doubt I’ll have to,” Jon quips hoarsely, the meager levity of which gives way immediately as his entire body suddenly does the same. 

“Whoa! Hey, _what_ -” Martin struggles to catch him fully as Jon crumples against his chest, but he succeeds enough to keep him from falling face first onto a chunk of concrete.

“ _Shit_ ,” Martin mutters, “hang on, v’got you, shit _shit_ , m’sorry _fuck_.”

“S’ _ah_ s’okay,” Jon says weakly.

Clearly it isn’t.

_He_ isn’t, and Martin was more concerned with snogging than tending to Jon’s wounds. And there are plentiful _dozens_ of them, his clothing torn in great gashes, the dark skin underneath darkening further with malicious bruises. Then there’s the matter of his face. The shoddy bandaging there, scarlet soaked, wafts a scent of copper so sharp it turns Martin’s stomach to razors and an abrupt, seizing horror lances through his mind, the image of - of the eyes, above, and Jon’s wound… 

But no. _Thank_ _fucking Christ_ , no, it isn’t that. As Martin cajoles Jon’s hands away peeks gingerly beneath the blood soaked fabric, he sees that, although there is _significant_ damage, none of it seems to _be_ … his eye. Insofar as he can immediately tell. It’s swollen shut, but isn’t nearly as bad as gouge wounds he’s seen otherwise, and he doubts Magnus had any acid on hand. Unless he did… 

No, _no_ , he doesn’t have time to think like that. They’ll address the cause later, the result is what matters. Stemming the blood, assessing the extent of Jon’s other lacerations, praying to whatever benevolent entity might exist that he can make it out of the pit and back up to Daisy… this, he can do. He - he can… 

“I… _shit_ ,” he wants to say so many other more encouraging things, but here’s Jon, safe but so very, very hurt, and Martin can’t do anything except sit beside him and poke and prod and _hope_.

For his part, Jon remains terribly still, though surely the ground does not accommodate any sort of comfort. Sure enough, he begins to shift and groan - not exactly _good_ signs, but at least there’s enough life in him yet.

“He’s dead,” Jon croaks, his right eye peering up at Martin, squinting through, no doubt, unfathomable amounts of pain. “Just… so you know. Tore his eyes out, myself.”

Martin laughs. Doesn’t mean to, but it’s punched out of him with equal parts revulsion and relief. 

“You - you should’ve seen the sky,” he says, seemingly apropos, till Jon turns his good eye upward. 

The sight of it widening in awe and shock snares something in Martin’s mind, but the flame of recollection dies before he has a chance to examine it, and Jon’s looking at him again, anyway. That’s far more important.

“Jesus Christ,” he’s saying. “Did - is - I… is that how you found out?”

Martin scoffs, because he’s earned that, and dammit if he doesn’t love when Jon’s being obtuse.

“Yeah, because we need a big exploding eye to know when _you’re_ off doing something daft.”

“I wasn’t _trying_ to be subtle, you ass,” Jon retorts fondly, though something else in his tone doesn’t let Martin fully believe him. “I was just… hoping for a head start.”

“Well you got it and scared us shitless,” Martin says. “So, congratulations.”

Jon sulks at that, and Martin starts to apologize, but he’s cut off as the sound of footsteps, laborious and slow, echoes distantly from behind. He whirls around, grabbing a sizable chunk of rubble, ready to bash whoever or _whatever’s_ head in, but -

“ _Daisy_!” 

In his excitement, Martin nearly throws the rubble at her anyway, Daisy limping out of the dust clouds rolling around them, her face contorted with pain, but it softens near to tears when she sees Martin. 

And then Jon leverages himself up from his prone position. 

And the tears fall readily. And she races the last yards between them. And Martin is barely able to scramble aside before she’s launching herself at Jon, all but tackling him in a ferocious hug.

“Stupid, _stupid_ son of a _bitch_ ,” she growls, nails just verging on the tips of claws as she embraces him in a death grip.

“Ow, _ow ow ow, Daisy, ow_ ,” is all Jon manages, and though Martin can see the pain is extremely real, writ plain and twisted across the parts of Jon’s face still exposed, he’s not keen to separate Daisy from her prey.

“ _Bastard_!” She spits at last, landing a punch to Jon’s left shoulder as she pulls away.

Jon yelps, and this time, Martin does intervene.

“Cut it out,” he warns, and not a second too late. 

As Martin interposes himself between Daisy and Jon, he sees her pupils are still blown horribly sharp and wide. He struggles to challenge such an intense gaze, but Jon’s genuinely whimpering from her rough treatment, and there’s no telling how far she pushed herself to get them both here before she collapsed.

“Hey,” he says, staring her down. “You’re _here_ . Okay? _Stay_.”

She bares her teeth in a faint snarl, but he holds his own glower till she blinks - once, thrice - and her pupils thin to a more acceptably human roundness. With it, a thin veneer of exhaustion washes over her expression, and Martin knows the thrall of her hunt has receded once more. But only just. She pushed herself to its brink to get here, and there’s no way he’s letting her do it again to get them home. 

“Sorry,” she mutters, scratching at her inner arm. She’s taken to wearing baggier clothes in case… well… _this_ happens, but even now, she looks the worst for any wear Martin’s yet witnessed.

“S’ _nn - ah…_ s’alright,” Jon grunts, recalling Martin to the immediate concern of _his_ state of physical duress.

Seems none of them can catch a goddamn break… but then, Jon did just oust Magnus. The mere idea of that, however, trying to visualize what happened, Martin just can’t conceive it, so he does what he does best, swallows it down like a bitter pill and attempts to rationalize their next move.

“So,” he says, clapping his hands in an effort of finality, of ‘here’s whatever the fuck we do now.’

“So,” he repeats, “Magnus is dead.”

“Ha,” Daisy chuffs out and gives Jon a sardonic thumbs up. “Way to go, Sims. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Nor did I,” Jon replies, the words laboured with both sarcasm and pain as he tries and fails to get to his feet again.

“Shit, hold on,” Martin bends and offers his hand, and when Jon takes it, holds firm, Martin finds himself, just for a second, grounded and sure, a gleed of conviction taking seed in his chest.

“Right,” he says once Jon’s stood and leaning heavily against him for support. “Well, I guess we just… go home then.”

“Are we… going to talk about that? At all?” Daisy asks, looking suitably horrified at the state of Jon’s face, like she’s only just now noticing it.

“Magnus,” Jon offers, enigmatically.

“Yeah, I could figure that on my own, Sims, _thanks_.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Jon adds, but the words sound less than impressive caged behind his grimace of pain.

“If you say so,” Daisy gives Martin a withering roll of the eyes, and he glares back.

“If you two are done,” he says. “Then I’d like to start figuring out how the hell we’re supposed to get out of here.”

“I can carry you both,” Daisy grunts, crossing her arms, but the momentum of even that sends her staggering. Only slightly, but enough to betray her cool entirely.

“Yeah… that’s a no.”

“I’m fine,” she insists, and sounds even less convincing than Jon.

“ _Neither_ of you are,” Martin says, “so we’re just going to have to get… Jesus, I don’t know, _creative_ about this.”

Two things happen, then, in those exact seconds. Well, three, technically, but two are of most immediate concern. The first is that Jon shivers, sudden and intense - so hard Martin swears he hears his teeth clack - and clings tighter to Martin’s arm. In succession to that, a very distinct _cre-e-a-a-k_ echoes from several feet away to the left of their group, where a massive pile of rubble stands tall and imposing. The third, less important _thing_ is that Martin remembers how exposed they are, how wrong everything still is, and now the hairs on the back of his neck stand to full, prickling attention, portending, no doubt, something awful.

“Both of you stay here,” he whispers, though there’s no point to it. They’re stood completely in the open; anything can see them, and not just the weeping sky, either.

“Daisy, hold him,” he says, anyway, and guides Jon to take her arm and shoulder.

“Martin,” Jon begins, but Martin cuts him off with a strident _shh!_ and a finger to his lips.

“S’okay, just gonna check it out,” he says, and, with his pulse in his throat, slowly, _so_ slowly he inches his way toward the rubble, toward the _creak_ and the now gut-churning familiarity that echoes after it.

Sure enough, there - and so rudely insinuating itself between the twisted shapes of two steel slats, because it definitely doesn’t _belong_ there - is a door. Jaundice stained, ajar, and pale around the edges where a faint light seeps through from the other side of its no doubt infinite hallways. There is no laughter, though. No beckoning hand.

“Hey… guys?” Martin calls weakly over his shoulder, backing away from the door, step by incremental step, but not for a second taking his eyes from it.

“ _Shit_ ,” he hears Jon curse. 

“We - but we haven’t seen her in months?” He continues, when Martin joins them again. 

“This can’t be a coincidence,” adds Daisy.

Martin knows he should be the one to lead from here, to take action, to figure out why - why why _why_ why _now_ \- Helen has decided to return. Last they’d seen her, she was dragging four of their best marksmen over her threshold and vanishing without explanation. Well… not explicitly, anyway. There’d been a row between her and Jon after it came to light she wasn’t playing _nearly_ as neutral a party as she’d made herself out to be. At the start of this all, she’d been, well, _helpful_ \- infinitely more powerful, fickle, and _irritating_ , sure, but still erring toward the side of assisting their rebel efforts. Then something reached a breaking point, and they’ve seen neither door nor giggle of her distorted presence for ages.

Until now.

“I - I think,” stammers Martin, not thinking at all, because what the hell is there to do?

Then, with a tone of unsettlingly grim conviction, Jon says, “We should go.

“I’m serious,” he says, when Martin finally tears his gaze from the aperture and stares disbelieving daggers at him. “I… I just _know_ , okay? Trust me, she’s… helping.

“I think,” he adds quietly.

Martin, for the sake of his nerves, pretends not to hear that last bit. Because what else can they do? They’ve no feasible way out of this pit, no strength to walk the six hours back to camp, and no certainty about the world beyond the corpse of the panopticon aside from the glaring weather report overhead. And it’s safe to say there’s not going to be much other than spiteful stares and metaphysical crying as whatever Jon did to Magnus takes root at the heart of the Beholder. Christ… they still have to sort out what comes next from _that_.

“Alright, door it is,” Martin concedes, because he’s so fucking tired.

“Right,” agrees Jon, sagging in Daisy’s arms with what Martin hopes is only relief.

The bandage on his face still gleams bright and crimson, but it’s as if Jon doesn’t even notice. Or just doesn’t want to draw attention. Either way, Martin will be demanding _every_ answer once they’re back at camp, an inevitability he clings to, pushes out into the cruel, broken world, because if this is another trick, he may very well just snap. 

“So uh…” Daisy gives Jon a bit of a jostle, hoisting him by the underarms like a particularly floppy cat. “We gonna go or? You want to wait till something finds us.”

“Please let go of me,” Jon protests, but there’s little vim to counter Daisy’s vigor, and Martin’s afraid she’s about to literally sling him over her shoulder.

That won’t be good for either of them, so he gestures, arms out, and she _hmphs_ , but relinquishes Jon who gratefully tips into Martin’s less distressing hands. 

“We stay _together_ ,” he says, directing the instruction at Daisy, especially. “No staking out ahead, no _tracking_. None of it.”

“Couldn’t with _that_ ,” Daisy counters, indicating Jon’s general bloodsoaked and battered self. “You bloody stink, Sims.”

“Noted,” Jon grumbles - wincing as he adjusts his position to use Martin as more of a crutch. “I’ll be sure to take better hygienic precautions next time I save the world.”

“Not saved yet,” Daisy thrusts a thumb up at the sky. 

“Let’s discuss this later, yeah?” Martin’s really not keen on dawdling now they’ve decided to brave Helen’s… whatever this is - peace offering? Truce? - and the pulse he feels where he’s holding Jon’s wrist flutters far too fast and shallow for his liking.

“Right,” says Daisy.

“Right,” says Jon.

And though none of it is, Martin nods anyway. And with the seeping shadow of the black and blue sky piercing down upon them, they turn their backs to the panopticon - sprawled as its own perverse cenotaph - and brace themselves for whatever waits beyond Helen’s threshold.

-

Of their slap-dash little survival trio, Daisy is the only one who has never fallen victim to the Distortion’s haunt, so she barely raises an eyebrow at the hallways themselves as they cluster inside, instead reserving that reaction for Jon and Martin.

“Oh my god.”

Martin.

“Fucking _hell_.”

Jon.

“She - I - this can’t -”

Both.

Both of them, utterly shocked at the sight that greets them beyond the always-so-assuming door. 

Where tacky shag carpeting once proliferated, now it’s strewn in flayed chunks, barely concealing the deep gouge marks that rake in foot long, uneven sets of five along the floor. The frames that once held so many, maddening mirrors now hang mostly empty, their glass gutted and pulverized. The lamps still remain, but only insofar as to leak the ailing light which casts its pallid ambiance on the scene, entire.

“I… take it something’s amiss,” Daisy says, at last breaking the stifling silence of the carnage.

“This is… bad,” Martin echoes, obvious and dumbfounded.

But Jon? Jon bears the worst of it, of still _seeing_ and still _knowing_. 

Despite those being such capricious things in the wake of what he’s done, still they persist: the sins and sacrifice he cannot disclose, cannot bring himself to accept though they root themselves so deeply inside himself, now, deeper than the gouges in the floor, and deeper, still, than the fractal depths of the frames, their fractures like bone, the scaffolding on this place torn asunder for a reason he does not understand, and yet knows all the same is his fault. 

For he sees so clearly with his eye, and his mind’s eye - bruised though it may be. 

And he sees with _his_ other one, too, cruel and triumphant and _drinking it all in_.

And he knows. Knows where to go, which patches of carpet to follow - like bits of maggot riddled bread. What frames to twist - till they’re dry of their moldering marrow. Where to step through, and where not to mistake chasm for threshold for dead end for laughter. Like it used to be, before this domain was made to _not_ , and made so by him, no matter how many steps, removed. 

So he says, like an apology, “I know,” and his eye throbs, and Martin and Daisy stare at him like they can see the beating behind his bandages, like they, too, know what he’s done.

But they don’t. And they _won’t_ . And he will fix this. _All_ of this. 

For now, he will lead them out and away. From the Institute, from its _results_. A more immediate consequence awaits him, and he welcomes its simplicity.

“That way,” he says, half dazed with the conviction of an easily sought goal, horrible though its end may be.

“Jon,” says Martin cautiously, and regardless of the fact Jon’s using him as a bodily crutch, he sounds a half dozen miles away. 

“I just know,” Jon says, before Martin can say anything more. 

Then, “Please.”

Because he has to do something. There has to be something _good_ in this. It can’t all be for naught. 

_It will be_.

He ignores that. Steadily, he ignores _that_ , and even manages to not double over, clutching his wound though it weighs upon him, terribly.

“Well, we don’t exactly have any _leads_ , do we?” Daisy chimes in, but she’s not fooling anyone, least of all Jon. 

He hears the blood beneath her aloof demeanor, sees the weariness in her scars, her shadow-ringed eyes, the way her hands struggle to make even fists. 

_What did it do to you,_ he yearns to ask. _What did_ **_I_ ** _do?_

“Right,” he says, wishing he felt as empty as he sounds. 

And he can’t bear to look at Martin as he says, “...Okay.”

So he nods toward the vagueness yawning out in front of them. From where they’re stood, there’s only one feasible direction the hallways take until their twisted guts properly reveal themselves. It’s static now, all of it, and entirely more deceiving for that fact, but Jon already sees where to emerge. This place has no consequence left, only the finititude it so loathes.

So they begin their procession, and to Jon it sounds like a funeral march, each footstep a solemn death knell.

“Christ, this place is weird,” Daisy says after who knows how long.

_He does._ _He knows._

“Should have seen it in its heyday,” Martin fails to laugh. 

“I… hope she’s okay,” he adds, when the remnants of levity grow too oppressive.

Jon says nothing. What is there to say? So very much, so he cannot, only pipes up when it’s time to not turn this way and do go not that way and don’t not do see if that lamp’s got a hinge. Or not.

It does, all of it, the not’s, the lamps, the things Jon says, till at last they reach a dead end so scored with gouge marks, it’s a wonder that there’s enough wall left for evidential relief. 

“Here,” Jon says dully, his eye pounding, _leering_ , the excitement in his gut churning a great gulp of bile up his throat. 

He swallows it, numb to the burn, and, shrugging out of Martin’s arms, he limps forward, braces his hands where _her’s_ were, and pushes.

It gives like generosity, like it’s _oh_ so _kind_ to permit them an exit. To Jon, it feels more akin to termite riddled flesh, spongy and pocked. Flimsy. Like this whole charade. Like he, too, could crumble at any moment.

He doesn’t. The wall does, and just like that, they’re all three of them emerging from the hallways into the murky grey safety of the camp. 

Save, it’s not that anymore, is it? Everything has changed. The camp shivers with an untenable nervousness, clamors of voices and shouts rising, swelling, falling, indiscernible yet all equally distinct in various stages of shock. And, at the foot of this makeshift threshold Jon has made, there lays Helen, unseen for months, unforgivable for her transgressions. Crumpled, fetal.

But she’s here now. And, now, she is dying.

-

Basira’s barely finished pressing the butt of a loaded pistol into one set of hands before another pair is tugging at her arm.

“Wait your _turn_ ,” she snaps. 

Then she turns, herself, and comes face to face with Moira - one of the camp’s best non-affiliate hunters - and the look on her face drains the color from Basira’s.

“They’re back,” Moira says. “And… and so’s Helen.”

“ _What_ ,” Basira’s on her feet in an instant, charging out of the munitions bunker and providing Moira little leeway to keep pace and actually lead _her_.

“Back of the Co-op,” she puffs, finally managing to outpace Basira’s nigh thunderous footfalls.

She nods, but spares Moira little concern other than to tell her, “Go back and make sure Han and their lot are outfitted. I need secondary perimeter checks _now_.”

“Yes ma’am!” Moira half skips, half stumbles out of Basira’s way, and she’s promptly forgotten - _everything_ is - till _there_ , as Basira takes a foolhardy shortcut through the gutted store, vaulting fallen shelves and sprays of littered glass, she hears them, the susurrus of conversation coming from the stockroom.

She all but bursts in, greeted by the sight of her three friends standing round the prone form of Helen, each of them stanced suddenly to fight. Well, to the best of their ability - Martin, strangely, seems most capable as Jon visibly flags in his arms. 

Then there’s Daisy.

And there’s too much distance between them.

And Basira has to amend that, has to afford herself at least one, goddamn moment of reprieve. So she does. Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t curse. Just hurries forward and catches Daisy in her own embrace as they both fall against each other. 

“Thought you were dead,” Basira half hiccups into Daisy’s collar.

“Me? Never,” Daisy laughs, strained as a desert wind, burying her face in Basira’s hijab, clinging so fiercely to her back - arms a vice around Basira - it’s a wonder she isn’t snapped in half. 

“What did you do.”

Basira.

“I don’t know.”

Daisy.

And Basira wants so badly to kiss her, but… Martin, Jon, _Helen_ . The _fucking sky._

She pushes back, looks Daisy in the eye. She’s hurt, Basira can tell, but Daisy won’t admit to it until she’s ready, till they’re alone together. So she swallows down her fear, turns from Daisy’s aching face, and stares daggers at Jon, Martin, fucking _Helen_.

Her voice is low and composed though her heart beats a frenetic rhythm in her chest, right where Daisy was pressed the closest.

“What the fuck,” she says, “is going on.”

-

Altogether, it’s more of an ordeal than any of them have the time or energy to spare for. And everyone save Jon is glad to see Helen serving her apparent just desserts, but the satisfaction is short lived. And then beaten into the ground, for good measure.

Because it is _Helen_ . Not… not-Helen, not what the Spiral made of her, used her for, what it twisted up and around and _insidethroughout_ , till she was only a shell. She isn’t that anymore.

“Not - not here,” she’s saying, mouth writhing around gibberish, limbs twitching.

It’s Jon - of course _of course_ \- who’s the first to kneel and press wary palms to her shoulders.

She jackknifes at the touch, bolting upright into a halfway-to-sitting position. The momentum sends her crumpling against him, and there’s a moment where her fingers _dig_ like blades, where they try to turn sharp and distorted, but they don’t. They can’t.

All of this, Martin watches with pained scrutiny, the cogs in his head whirring, but none of their teeth catch, the greater machine of clarity sputtering uselessly, churning out nothing. And Jon looks even more lost, spectacularly helpless, as he holds the thing that was Helen. _Is_ her. It _is her_.

For their part, Daisy and Basira seem more focused on muttering conspiratorially; Martin catches whispers of “ _just disappeared_ ” and “ _said they were everywhere_ ” but it’s hard to focus when Jon is so intent on cradling the monster that betrayed them.

_Not_ a monster. Just.. Helen. Just her. 

_Fucking hell…_

And all he’s doing is standing around, uselessly, so he crouches beside Jon because; at least down here, it looks like he’s doing something. 

“It’s gone,” Jon says, voice set in a grim monotone. 

Martin doesn’t ask for clarification; instead he watches Jon’s face deliberate upon an expression. It’s hard to discern with the bandages in the way - _Christ that needs medical attention_ \- but then Jon was never good at articulating himself like this. Still, the tight line of his mouth, his jaw, the gleam in his good eye, Martin knows this look well. 

“Why?” He asks, stupidly.

Because with Jonah Magnus dead, the Eye should be no more - no longer tethered to this world, its anchor lost. So neither should its influence hold anymore dominion over its acolytes. So Jon should not _know_ , but the sadness behind his pain speaks volumes of agonizing insight. 

“I did this,” he says.

“Jon.”

“They’re all gone, Martin - _going_ \- all of them. How can you live without that part of you?”

The words twist razors into Martin’s stomach. They’d assumed the usurpation of the Eye would similarly oust the other fears back to the nightmarish realm they inhabit beside the real and waking world, but they hadn’t been able to hypothesize the full extent of what this would do to the persons _bound_ to them. To those who served, willing or otherwise.

“But… but,” Martin grasps at frayed straws, “but you? You - you’re not? And Daisy? Neither of you are -”

“What’s going on.”

Basira looms suddenly over them, glaring first at Helen, and then directly at Martin.

“She’s dying,” Jon says, indicating Helen with a frighteningly passive sweep of the hand, “because the fears are retreating.”

Basira says nothing. In fact, no one says a word, and the eerie quiet of the unending world around them filters in. Odd, that, how silently the world mourns as it remakes itself, as it destroys those who tried to survive.

“Bullshit,” Basira says at last, not angry, but very, _decidedly_ firm.

Jon just stares at her, face inscrutable. In his arms, Helen moans. She does not echo.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Basira repeats. “How the hell do you know she’s dying?

“You - avatars have never needed the whole lot of them in our world,” she continues. “Why would this be any different? It’s not like you killed fear itself, Sims.”

“Did you?” Daisy chimes in. She’s sitting, now, looks utterly drained, but she wears a thin smile.

Jon doesn’t answer, looks like he’s about to, then Helen groans again, her eyes snapping open, and she _stares_.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Martin nearly gags then and there.

Her sockets - filled with fractals - swivel and flit, like they can’t find a point of focus. Till they find Jon, and then they do, they very much _do_ focus.

“Jon,” she croaks, her voice awful and solid, strained like it can’t stand to be only itself.

“I’m here,” says Jon. 

Which is a bit of a lie, Martin thinks distantly; Jon looks about as present as smoke. But he’s holding onto Helen, and she’s holding back, and there is so - much - _pain_ around them all. So he’s bloody well not about to start arguing semantics.

“Oh,” says Helen, and Martin casts a useless look at Jon who is not looking back, so he directs it at Basira, Daisy, who stare similarly lost back at him.

“I can’t…” Helen is saying, and wavers her fingers into the air, searching out something not there.

Jon meets them with his own, wincing as they entwine, but he does not bleed. Instead, he curls closer against her, embracing her fractured body.

Martin doesn’t quite catch what he says as he whispers into her limp hair, not all of it, but what he does hear fills his heart with shrapnel, burrowing stabs of an inexplicable loss. Because he’s heard this before, many _many_ times when Jon coaxes an avatar to calmness. But never before has he sounded so… final. Like he’s delivering an epitaph.

“I can’t… see, Jon,” Helen says. “Can’t - can’t see them.”

“I know…” Jon murmurs in return, over and over again, like a mantra, a prayer, a _plea_.

Till, finally, as all but Martin struggle to watch the scene unfolding before them, Helen goes limp in Jon’s arms. Silent and still. When he pulls away, there’s the briefest of smiles on her slack lips, but no laughter poises there. No cruel, strangling levity. Only peace, and the quiet knell of freedom.

Jon holds her for a very long time, and he is watched, longer still.

_______________________________________________

It’s a small age before he’s ready to let her go, till he’s found all he can from the shell of her personhood, till he can convince himself it’s no longer her, and that it’s _good_ like this. Better. That he did the right thing for once. 

_Just this once_ . His own voice echoes this inside his head, and his eyes burn, and he _doesn’t have bloody time for it_.

“Jon?”

It’s Martin, and though he sounds fathoms away from the storm between Jon’s ears, he’s heard, and Jon follows his voice back to a semblance of reality. That being: himself sprawled on the floor of the Co-op’s stockroom with Helen’s still warm body laying motionless in his lap, her face, her hair stained with streaks of gore where he’s gone and pressed his wounds too close. 

“Jon.”

Firmer, now, less cautious, with an accompanying hand upon his shoulder so he can’t convince himself otherwise.

“She’s…” he begins, still not looking up, so afraid of what might be revealed.

Then, “It’s alright,” and Daisy steps round beside Martin, puts her own hand to his other shoulder. Harder. Firmest. Ever so slightly cruel. It stems the build of tears, nicely, and he nods.

“Let me take her, yeah?” 

Daisy again, so he gives another nod, and she steps fully into view, crouching beside him, coaxing Helen from his hands.

“Get him looked after,” she says, not standing, yet, just waiting with Jon as she cradles the consequence of his actions. 

“Right,” Basira’s ever tenacious surety comes closer from behind, and with Martin’s trembling fingers, she helps him sway to his feet. 

“What - what are you going to do to her?” He asks, and Daisy stares back with wet, stony eyes.

“I don’t know,” she says plainly.

And it is _such_ a relief to hear.

So he says, “Okay,” and allows himself to be led away

-

The energy that pervades the camp strikes him like a cold blade to sinew, as if someone’s hidden a sparking power line somewhere, and everyone’s just waiting for the shock, the shoe drop, but it can’t come because no one knows where the goddamn live wire _is_. Or who’s hidden it. But they sure as hell can take a stab at it.

The sky is their best point of reference, anyway, and anyone who can spare a moment stares at it in near rapturous horror. That is until Martin and Basira come parading one Jonathan Sims through the main thoroughfare, his visage an absolute _state_ of carnage and exhaustion and defeat, and suddenly the sky is second rate. Well, mostly. But Jon is a more direct conduit, and far easier to convene upon.

“Did he do this?” Rises one query, not exactly accusatory, but certainly not kind. 

“What’s going on?” Another, more naive, and _very_ frightened.

“Is it over? Did we win?”

The questions crash like a relentless tide as Basira and Martin fend off the growing crowd.

“Back _off_!” Basira finally growls, as one scout by the name of Jax gets suddenly too close, making a swipe for Jon.

“Look at him, though!” Jax counters, holding his ground admirably despite the several inches Basira has on him. “He’s _done_ something, hasn’t he?”

“Fuck off,” Basira spits, and proceeds to bare her teeth to whoever so much as stands in the way of their path to the medical tent.

The suspicious whispers do not abate, but at least no one makes any more advances on them. For his part, Jon is more than content to let them have at him, to barrage him with blame, to tear answers from his throat if need be. That is, till Martin gingerly helps him onto one of the few available beds stationed in the tent, and suddenly all thoughts of martyrdom are abandoned, his very _bones_ thick and weighted by utter depletion.

“I’ll go find Banks,” Basira mutters, shooting a poisonous glare at the entrance to the tent, as if this might ward off prying interlopers. 

“Permission to beat the shit out of anyone who tries to touch him,” she tells Martin, and Jon wants to laugh at that, wants to tell her she need hardly be explicit, but she’s already bustling out of the tent, and it’s just him and Martin now, and so many awful things that can’t be articulated.

They don’t look at each other. 

Then Martin looks at him - Jon spies in what little periphery yet functions for him. 

Then Jon looks at him, and he’s looking away, and then neither are looking and then both, both of them, they’re seeing each other through tired tears and Martin’s pressing close, kissing him despite the mess, the sorrow on his mouth and stuck at the back of his throat.

“Christ, what a day,” Martin eventually hiccups, his words wet and downturned against Jon’s lips. 

“I haven’t saved us,” Jon whispers hoarsely in return, in the hopes this might instill _something_ in Martin.

And it does, it _must_ , because Martin moves away, just an inch, just enough, to bring his hands to Jon’s face, to wince at the roughshod bandages now crusted to his skin and the left eye that sits swollen amidst it. 

Sans permission - sans _asking_ for it - Martin begins to remove the soiled cloth. And Jon should stop him, _needs_ to stop him, simply cannot let him see what has happened, what has left himself and the world in delusory tatters, but… Martin’s hands are so careful, so soft in spite of the ways he’s been hardened. And his own eyes valiantly try to hold back their sorrow, but still they shine brighter, sadder, when he fully removes the bloody rags and fails to quell a sharp gasp.

“Jon…” he says, softly, slowly, ghosting his fingers over the tender skin, the cuts, the bruising, the _evidence_. 

_Don’t, please don’t,_ Jon begs, as a smile that is not his own unfolds in the blank space behind the eye. _I’ll make it go away, I’ll fix it, I promise_.

“Fucking _hell_ , Sims,” 

The smile retreats, simmering to a smirk as Daisy ducks back into the tent and Martin wrenches his hand away. 

( _Oh but, how long can you hide it, Archive_?)

_As long as it takes, you fucking monster_.

But perhaps he won’t have even that. Because Basira follows after Daisy, and behind her trails Oliver Banks. 

He looks… awful. More depleted than Jon’s ever seen him, and _see_ him, Jon does. Sees the faint, auratic shimmer of _thick_ and _black_ and _crushingpulsingkilling_ winding round Oliver’s limbs, his throat, punching through his skin like needles.

But the horror on his face, as he stares at Jon, is far more absolute, is a knowing horror, a _seeing_ horror, and Jon knows that the tendrils twine around him, too, though he needn’t a mirror to see where they find their roots. It’s reflected plainly enough in Oliver’s expression, in Martin’s trembling fingertips, in the way Daisy squints and Basira glowers. In the cajoling whispers that have found their voice, already, in the thrumming heat behind one swollen eyelid, and the brackish burn behind the other.

Yes, he knows _exactly_ where they burrow. And he knows exactly how it must end.

_______________________________________________

  
  


The thing is, Oliver had gotten so wrapped up in surviving, he’d somewhat neglected the scope of the resplendent curse he’d been gifted. So mundane did the writhing portends of his sight become, they’ve operated more as visual noise than anything particularly ominous. 

Hell, when the world first went to shit and the streets filled with offerings, he’d been so overwhelmed, so inundated and choked and _full_ of his patron’s influence, he’d holed up in Waterstones and hid for two months. The End, in its full, untenable glory - this glut of death - disturbed him, and he’d have no part in it. And then the survivors found him, brought him to the mercy of the ones who had started this, and he… joined them. Offered up his “skills” under the condition he could have the ones who could not be saved. He did need to survive, himself, after all. 

And so it’s been that he’s played the part of macabre doctor here at the camp. He doesn’t perform miracles, no, but it’s far easier for those more medically inclined to heal and treat when they know where it is Terminus has sunk its claws in. As such, he’s existed in a sort of limbo state, not exactly denying his fate, but not indulging it massively, either. And he’s had more than a few nurse jokes thrown his way, which he counters by telling whoever was stupid enough to cross him exactly where the black is digging in. Altogether, it’s not… a terrible way to go about the apocalypse.

Until the morning comes, and the sky is riddled with the things of his nightmares, the eyes warring with tendrils black. Then they’re rent apart, then halfway sutured again, and the bodies thronging around him, running amok in the camp, so many of their fates have shifted, those who are touched as he is encased in a pulsing, oily fate that was not there before. 

One of the Buried, who’d worn the scars of her acceptance around her chest like plate armor, now has them coiling down her legs, too, waiting to anchor in The Forever Unbreathing. A Corrupted scout - who’d determinedly used their affliction against enemies _only_ \- now bleeds thick globs of maggoty black through their open, shouting mouth as they try to direct the flow of panic.

It’s a feast of newness, strange and compelling, and he’s dizzy with the sight of so much fresh carnage that he almost doesn’t notice who’s approaching him. As they near, though, pushing through the swarming camp to where he’d just been returning from disposing of a meal - before everything turned inside out and all that - he’s unable to focus on anything else. He recognizes the pair - Daisy and Basira - but their scars are virtually unrecognizable. Where Basira had worn her cessation like a crown, it’s now slunk heavily down her chest like an iron maiden, gnawing through her ribs to her heart. 

And Daisy… Jesus Christ… 

Oliver had once quipped about talking with her mouth full - being of the Hunt and all that, the way the black wriggled between her teeth - but there’s little to joke about. He can barely look at her straight, the black unspooling from her eyes, her nostrils, flailing unbeknownst to all but him. And he barely has a second to comment on it, Basira grabbing him, yanking him upright, and dragging him toward the medical tent, her partner in tow portending something he can’t even begin to parse.

And then they’re in the tent.

And there’s… _someone_ laying on a cot, their body a veritable Rorschach splatter of tendrils what for how thickly they’ve ensconced the person in their inevitability. A buzz of familiarity hums to life in the back of Oliver’s mind, a remembered image like this one, of the last person he’d tried to forewarn of Fate. 

She hadn’t listened. 

And here he is, presented with the same purpose, but all he can do is stare. _Stare_ , as something unfurls from the morass of inky black and stares right back. 

He’s recalled to an adage, then, how Terminus never blinks. 

Well, neither does this. 

It just watches. 

And watches.

-

Oliver looks, well - for lack of a less befitting turn of phrase - like death warmed over, and then left on the counter too long and starting to turn.

“Who… is that,” he asks.

Martin shoots Basira a look, who turns to Daisy, who winds herself with the shrug she gives and has to sit again, so that leaves Martin to continue looking at Oliver who won’t - stop - looking - at - Jon.

“Banks,” Basira breaks the silence, saving Martin the agony of approaching something he very much doesn’t want to think about.

“What is it,” Basira holds her tone steady - how? Martin can hardly guess - and the tent bates its breath as Oliver exhales and finally tears his gaze from Jon.

“That’s Jon, isn’t it,” he says, his mouth a thin line of grim conviction.

Before any of them can reply, Jon’s leveraging himself onto his elbows, and Oliver staggers back, flinching.

“Stay,” Jon says hoarsely. “Just… you. Stay. Everyone else please… just give us a minute.”

“Jon,” Martin winds an arm around his waist, holding him steady, hoping to take the weight off his shaking shoulders.

“It’s okay, Martin,” Jon looks so _pleadingly_ at him, his expression somehow so honest despite his wounds and how his swollen left eye seems only to glare. 

So he’s helpless, really, when Jon leans in, smooths his palm against his jaw, and draws him into a slow, soft kiss. 

“It’s okay,” Jon murmurs against his lips. 

“…Okay,” Martin sighs in turn, forgetting entirely to ask _why_ Jon doesn’t want him present to talk to Oliver. 

But that’s trust, isn’t it? Though Jon does some incredibly selfish things, they’ve built an impregnable faith between each other, and Martin can always hold out hope for that. 

So he does. Trusts. That Jon has his reasons, that he will share them in time, and that this is okay. He will be okay. They _all_ will. 

_______________________________________________

  
  


“What do you see.”

He carves right to the bone of it - hasn’t the time to waste, can’t bear to be away from Martin when there’s so little of it _left_.

Oliver, standing his ground admirably, grunts, keels to his knees, and swears colorfully.

“Shit,” Jon quails - hadn’t actually meant to _compel_ \- but then, it wasn’t _him_ , was it?

_(Goodness me, whatever are you trying to imply?)_

“Jon, I -” Oliver begins.

“Just tell me,” Jon pleads, the voice behind his eye crescendoing to laughter.

“I don’t,” Oliver answers. “I don’t see anything except _them_ . They’re everywhere, Jon, same as they were for Gertrude, but _so_ much worse. 

“What the hell did you do?” He continues, still in repose on the floor, and Jon watches him lift his head like a supplicant. “You’re covered in death, but I can’t - can’t see where it is. I - I don’t think even _Terminus_ can see, I don’t think it _understands_ you like that. 

“Jon,” there’s a note of percussive finality in his tone, like a stilled heartbeat. 

“I can’t see how you die.”

It must knock loose whatever strength remains in Oliver because he doubles back over, clutching his abdomen and groaning.

( _Such a pity, but you’ll need him to keep up your strength, won’t you._ )

Digging the heel of his hand into his left eye, Jon grits his teeth against a helpless scream and bores his focus onto Oliver, onto the one solution he might yet have.

“You can’t tell them,” he says, so quiet, but still heard over Oliver’s moans of pain. “And I need you to do something else for me.”

Oliver clutches his head in his palms. “I - I can’t. There’s too much, I can’t _do_ this anymore.”

“And it’s my fault,” Jon swallows _hard_ on the dense heat in the back of his throat. “But you might be - might be able to fix this.

“You’ve tried it before?” He hedges, when Oliver doesn’t respond. “To tear them out? I need you to - to do that.”

Oliver shakes his head, slow and rhythmic like a pulse, and the one in Jon’s eye gives a leap.

( _Interesting…_ )

“You have to,” Jon continues, voice gaining a rapid desperation, as though he could lose his faculties at any moment. “It might be the only way to fix this - to _help_ us.”

_It’s still tethered_ , he doesn’t say - _can’t_ say - doesn’t even understand it fully, himself. What happened in the panopticon, what Jonah wagered and lost and _cheated_ … What Jon wagered, himself, what he selfishly pursued at the expense of the world… surely, if he just _yanks_ hard enough, he can pull the poison out at the root, can find a way to rectify this.

“It’s here, Oliver, _please_ ,” he edges off the bed, sinking to the floor in a sprawl of knees and palms, slinking over to where Oliver cradles himself.

Jon takes one of his hands - the one least clawed into his own arm - and guides it to his face, presses Oliver’s clammy, cold fingers to the swollen lid of his left eye. The relief carves out two shocked gasps, one from himself, the other from… well… 

That’s what this is all about, isn’t it.

And Oliver must feel it, too, must _understand_ the thing that lurks within Jon, the vitriol and menace; the bargain, the plea, the _ultimatum_ \- the _inevitable_ , because he just couldn’t - fucking - _die_.

Couldn’t let it be that easy.

But this will be. He has to hope for that. In his blind hysterics, it just _has_ to be that easy.

Otherwise, why would Oliver sag with such relief? Why would his exhaustion suffuse Jon’s bones as his hand curls around something intangible and so viciously rooted within Jon? Why would Jon sigh with him as they understand the gravity of what unspools from his eye, what lurks so icy blue behind the black - the frostbite of a corpse that refuted itself for so many iterations? Generations. _Centuries_. Playing graceless guest to its unwilling hosts. But… well… 

There’s no other reason for it - no explanation for Oliver’s sudden consent, sudden _grip_ , and the ripping, tearing _sharp_ that pulses through Jon’s face as Oliver pulls, tugs, thrashes, _wrenches_. 

There’s the black, though. Still there despite Oliver’s determination, and thicker, now, veined with cobalt fangs that tut, disapproving and irritable, as a scream claws its way up Jon’s throat. And up Oliver’s, but he’s less consequential. And much weaker. 

( _And yet I expected better of you, Archive._ )

And Jon watches through his good eye as Oliver reels back, face a mask of stunned surprise, falling _hard_ onto the concrete floor.

The shimmer Jon saw before, squirming around Oliver like his own personal noose, grows grotesquely opaque, now, Jon _seeing_ the things that Oliver could not - not even on himself. 

Strangely, they dig into Oliver’s kneecaps, ignoring the pooling liquid around his head and instead skewering through and pinioning his legs as if on two spits. Had he the coherence, Jon might ponder the symbolism. 

( _But you’ve rather gone and done something quite stupid, haven’t you_ ? _We’ll need to amend this_.)

In Oliver’s hands, several chunks of black wriggle in his steadily loosening grasp. It’s the most peaceful thing Jon’s ever seen. And as the black encroaches on his vision, it’s still so beautiful. Calm and resolute. No ulterior motives. No falsities. Just the seeping in of an unconscious world and the promise of rest. 

He wonders in bullet time, as he falls to the floor beside Oliver, if he could maybe convince Martin to give this a try, too. Lord _knows_ he could use some proper r and r.

And then Jon’s eye closes. 

And another opens in earnest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- eye horror  
> \- body horror  
> \- blood  
> \- Jonah Magnus being a grade A twat
> 
> Chapter title taken from Youth by Daughter


	2. look, we landed; look, we're standing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've amended some tags to better suit the updates as they come out. The rating and such will change in future chapters, the number of which has also changed now I've ironed out my doc properly. That's all for announcements, please enjoy~
> 
> (Another shout out to Scraps and transarchivist on tumblr for their excellent beta skills. My grammar is atrocious and you two are immensely patient <3)
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

_ One of them sprawls upon the floor, wearing a wicked grin. _

_ One stands triumphant but still woefully starved for victory. _

_ Both of them are bleeding.  _

_ Both of them are failing to See. _

_ “Is this what you want?” One of them asks. Wicked. Grinning. _

_ The other responds like a wound, making kicked-animal-noises in the back of his throat as his fingers fail to stem the Watcher’s tide. _

_ “Did you truly believe you were so unimportant to our Watcher?” _

_ There is no compulsion, only raw and blood and the acute pang of waning depth perception. Perhaps this is how the wicked one gets a leg up on the starving one, gets him against the wall, stares him dead in the socket with his own gaping impiety. _

_ “My poor, smitten Archive…” the wicked one leers. “Do you think you will miss him? Do you know if that is possible in Terminus’s grasp? I can see to it you needn’t suffer the ambiguity - the Strangeness.” _

_ The wicked one laughs, “I’ll gladly have yours if you’d prefer.” _

_ “Or,” the wicked one sneers, “would you rather just die here with me.” _

_ The starving one can’t remember - his eye scalds where it is not, where it can’t pull the memory forth, the severing too great, too complete.  _

_ From a blade? Fingernails? Too quick. It was too quick, and now, so is everything else. Life too suddenly draining, choices too steadily slipping - dripping down his cheeks. _

_ Tears and pupil, alike. _

_ Something reminisces, just free of his grasp, just beyond the misty halo of his shattered eye. Another sleep, great and grave. Another choice.  _

_ Life in death, said a great poet of a great burden. The weight at his neck, the fate of his actions. His stupid, stupid bravery. _

_ Perhaps, then, there is more of their god left in the wicked one, more than is tenable to their injuries. Respective. Mirrored. For he grins wider, and knows he has won again.  _

_ Bereft, the blind man surrenders. At his neck, the albatross is blue. Watching. Wicked. _

_ “Very good, Jon.” _

_ Complete, the Watched man subsides, and lets the tide of his loss carry him far, far away. _

_______________________________________________

  
  


And there’s Martin.

Still.

Always.

Unwavering.

_ Seen _ .

And just that. Simple and safe and… singular. From the right. Observed only from the right. Because the left is bandaged again, swaddled in a cotton and antiseptic embrace. It burns his nose, but doesn’t dare touch the eye beneath the swollen skin. There’s nothing to heal that. He knows.

And there’s still Martin, clearer now, as he finds his bearings, tries to grasp his surroundings.

He’s in a bed, and Martin is beside it. 

Okay, that’s good.

It’s not a cot.

Not good. Well, less good. Well - not… familiar. 

So, yeah, not quite good, not quite bad, and  _ there’s _ Martin, sat beside it, elbows on the edge of the mattress, head in his hands, the soft rise and fall of his shoulders indicating something near to sleep but still so far from anything restful. It inspires a deep pang of guilt in Jon’s chest. He wants to reach out, reach over, and gently coax Martin into the bed with him and sleep till they can’t wake up. Or maybe wake up to a better side of this - of the awful fate he’s chosen for everyone. 

He’s not given the chance, however, to find any measure of peace. 

Because this isn’t the cot in the medical tent.

And there’s no tacky, copper  _ stick _ of blood on his face, his cheek, beneath the  _ very _ fresh bandages.

And there’s Martin -  _ damned _ Martin, lifting his head, blinking away fatigue like an afterthought as he meets Jon’s terrified gaze. 

And Jon knows.

And he’s known.

And  _ he _ is known, too.

“Jon,” begins Martin, careful as a flinch, and just as much a reflex, as though it’s the only certainty left about the man he loves. Just his name, and even that’s bloody  _ relative _ anymore, isn’t it.

“Where are we,” Jon whispers. He’s not ready. Not ready to do this. Was never ready - was going to  _ fix _ this before anyone found out. Was going to save them all  _ godfuckingdammit. _

“ _ Jon _ -”

“I said where  _ are _ we,” Jon cuts in, more forceful than he means to be, and Martin starts back, jaw working to grind down the guts of compulsion no doubt worming through his windpipe.

“ _ No _ -” Jon reaches for him, fumbles Martin’s hand to his lips, kisses it, holds tight. 

“No no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“Is it him,” Martin says, voice a willow reed to the oak-felling maelstrom. “Is it  _ him _ .”

Half of Jon pleads, the other leers.

“I don’t know,” he says. 

Martin’s eyes are still as steel; it  _ hurts _ to look back, but Jon does.  _ Does _ . Won’t waste the honesty of his good eye pretending this isn’t real, that it never was real. 

“Can you feel him.”

Jon nods.

“Is he -  _ Christ _ \- is he controlling you?”

Jon shakes his head.

Whatever resulted of his failed experiment with Oliver, it seems to have subdued Magnus, at least somewhat. There’s no voice, just a vague sense of… sauntering, at the back of his mind, like a tiger who knows the cage is rusting.

“Okay,” the fear in Martin’s eyes melts to warm, pooling sorrow, and his brows pinch.

“Can you tell me what happened,” he says, kneading his thumb over Jon’s knuckles, back and forth, counting them.  _ 123454321\.  _ Rhythmic, palindromic, like the self eating snake, though that’s better reserved for Jon’s state of affairs… 

“Anything,” Martin pleads softly. 

Jon… nods, and opens his mouth to respond, but for a second, a split-haired lapse of judgement, he glances away from Martin’s face, allows periphery to seep in, and he goes very, very still.

Funny, really, that he didn’t notice from the very start. They’d shared enough of the bed for him to know the give of its sunken box spring and downy pillows - especially counter to the spine-murdering cots from the camp. But, well, he’s rather  _ indisposed _ at the moment, and what was he to do? Not stare at Martin? Not thank the starless heavens his impulsive decision hadn’t utterly destroyed him - taken him from the one good thing left in this nightmare?

He’s gone and completed that task, though, so it’s the rest of the world’s turn to catch up. By increments. There’s the bed, of course, and then the slant of light through the windows, the curtains pulled back and picturesque around what he knows to be rolling green hills. If they’re still there, of course. They’d fled the cabin after - after… 

He can’t imagine what entity would find its throne amidst the unassuming hills of rural Scotland - the Lonely, maybe, but the cows make it rather hard to wallow.

He’s… spiraling, a bit, and Martin’s waiting. And they’re back at the cabin and -

“How long -” he’s being selfish, he  _ knows _ , but he ignores the guilt and presses on, “What happened, after Oliver, after -”

“Almost three weeks,” Martin answers, startling Jon more with the fact he’s so quick to do so rather than the gravity of the information, itself.

Then that sinks in, and he has to lay back properly into the pillows again.

_ A Memory: the prussian blue evening, splayed on the arch of his spine, the windows open letting wind-song in, a breeze to cool the heat and sweat and - _

( _ Oh my.)  _

The tiger simpers.

_ (So that’s what you got up to? Goodness me, Archi -) _

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Jon bolts upright again, digging a mean thumb into his bandages.

“What is it - are you - ?” Martin’s immediately upon him, but Jon manages to shove him away before he does any significant mother henning. 

“Three weeks,” he spits, as Martin freezes.

“Three  _ bloody _ weeks?”

“You can’t do this,” Martin says uselessly, because he can and  _ will _ , thank you very much.

“I can,” Jon says, brandishing a finger at Martin. “And I  _ will _ , thank you very  _ fucking _ much, Martin.”

“We  _ saved _ you - you -” Martin brandishes his own flurry of hand gestures, waving them about like startled pigeons. 

_ Stupid selfish son of a bitch _ , Jon thinks hysterically, wants so  _ badly  _ to hear it said aloud, but Martin’s fiery expression softens too easily, tapering back to bone deep sadness.

“He nearly  _ killed _ you, Jon.”

Oliver. He means Oliver.

“I asked him to,” Jon says bluntly,  _ needs _ the blow of a proper reprimand even if it’s not technically true. Because there has to be more recourse than  _ this _ \- more than pity and the easy escape to Scotland all over again when the monster they’re running from still thrives inside him.

“I don’t believe you,” says Martin, tears in his eyes.

“That’s too bad,” Jon grits out, his throat going tight and hot and  _ pathetic _ . “Because I did, I  _ had _ to.

“Because  _ I _ did this, Martin,” his voice breaks like a dam, though his eyes remain staunchly dry.

He soldiers on, “I tried to save us, and I fucked it all over again. I had him, Martin, had him on his goddamn  _ knees _ begging for his life. I could have stopped this, but - but -”

“Shut up.”

He blinks.

Again, “Just… shut up. Jon. I - I don’t want to hear it.”

“But -”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Martin barely raises his voice, but the force pummels any rejoinder straight from Jon’s tongue.

And then he’s stopped up, properly, as Martin moves in, cradles his face so carefully, and kisses him with such sad, soft lips. He places each word between Jon’s teeth penitent as alms, forcing Jon to swallow them. Bitter but necessary.

“ _ Shut up shut up. You idiot, you stupid, stupid idiot. Just shut up _ .”

“ _ Mn’k _ ,” Jon manages, half delirious with the whiplash of kissing-Martin-but-also-being-viciously-scolded-by-Martin.

Not that it hasn’t happened before, but that’s neither here nor there. And he’s here, very much  _ here _ . In the cabin, in their bed, in the whirlwind of Martin’s touch and sorrow and everything he would have sacrificed if he’d let Magnus die. 

At some point - an impossible feat, distant as a star - Martin stops saying things and keeps the both of them simply locked in an embrace, occasionally letting Jon pull away to gather a breath, but it’s a needless effort, small and unhurried, the crescendo of such awful things at last revealed, fizzling out on their own anticlimax. 

“I did it for you,” Jon murmurs.

Not an excuse.

Not  _ blame _ .

Just the truth, just for Martin.

“I-I don’t know how,” he continues, because he has to explain this all. In full, so they can come to a solution, so this can all be for goddamn  _ something _ .

“I was so close -”

At this, Martin pulls back so Jon can speak clearly, but still close enough to intercept any further self flagellation.

“The eyes,” Jon says, not looking anywhere in particular, though Martin remains a constant vigil in his flagging periphery. “We were - we were right about that.  _ Them _ . I punctured one - of his, I mean.”

He pulls a ragged, unsteady breath, and Martin’s hand strays up to cup his jaw and run his thumb over Jon’s cheek, heedless of the bandages and their implications.

“And then -”  _ Fast. So fast. And Sharp. What of? What did it? Him. Him him him him him. _

“I let my guard down, thought this was  _ finally  _ over.”

_ Jon _ .

“It hurt so much. I - I can’t believe I almost made you do that to yourself. And I couldn’t think, except that I’d - I’d never see you again.”

Jon.

“So I let him do it, let him convince me -  _ use _ me like he did Elias, and - and Wright and -”

“ _ Jon _ .”

His name brings him back, from a brink he hadn’t realized he was teetering on. His cheek, where Martin holds him, is tight with tear tracks, and fresh ones spill steadily over, a flood of a different sort - tenable, real. His.

“I knew,” he whispers, voice torn as the rags he’d tried to hide this all behind, “I knew I was going to die there, Martin. I felt it leaving me, the Eye,  _ all _ of it. I thought it was just  _ him  _ anchoring it but… I’ll never be free. 

“But - but if that means I can be with  _ you _ and - and everyone then… this has to be worth it, right? Please -  _ please _ tell me this is worth it, because I - I can’t accept it otherwise.”

He thinks Martin says his name again, but it’s hard to tell - through the tear slick kisses Martin takes from his baleful mouth, from the hands that touch him without menace or violence or manipulation, with the harmony of heartbreak Martin sobs alongside his own, till all they can do is lean one upon the other - forehead to forehead - eyes blissfully closed, breaths carelessly shared, grounded in a moment of pure, helpless togetherness.

“The world is still ending,” Jon offers, a gleed of acceptance murmuring in his mind’s eye. “But I don’t care.”

“Neither do I,” Martin breathes. 

It’s… a lie, of sorts. But in the moment, it shines like a beacon, guiding the storm ravaged wrecks of their fear through the rocky cliffs of uncertainty.

“I thought Oliver could pull him out,” Jon continues. “Thought, if he could see Jonah’s death wrapped up in - in me, he could just… remove it.

“But I guess that almost killed me again, too, huh?”

He feels Martin bristle, but receives only a weak nod, the movement of which causes Jon’s own head to cant, up and down, as though agreeing by proxy. It almost makes him laugh.

“He really knew what card to play,” Jon sighs, smiling, unseen, with a hapless tug of the lips. “F’weren’t for you -”

“Don’t -”

“I’m not  _ blaming _ you, Martin -”

“I know -” Martin cuts in again, and pulls back to fix Jon with something near to a glower. “I  _ know _ , but I don’t want to hear it - don’t  _ ever _ want you to apologize for - for fucking  _ living _ .

“You’re not a burden, Jon. You’re not a cause or a catalyst or his  _ puppet _ .

“You’re just…  _ you _ .  _ Human _ .”

It’s a nice platitude - really, it is.  _ Poetic _ , and Jon has time to parse the symbolism now. Not that he wants to. Or even needs to. They both know it’s patently untrue, layers of metaphor or otherwise. They could leave it like this, unspoken between them, latently believed by virtue of neither of them offering countermeasure. But Jon’s feeling spiteful of forgiveness, and if Martin won’t berate him properly, then he’ll just have to find his own recourse.

So he murmurs, “Not anymore,” as he kisses Martin’s forehead.

Then, “But we’ll find a way, yeah?”

Shakily, defeated, Martin breathes out, “Yeah.”

Reverent. And so sad. 

Jon’s not entirely sure he hates the sound of it.

_______________________________________________

  
  


It went like this:

They left the medical tent at Jon’s behest.

They waited, discussing nothing, dreading  _ everything _ , while trying to avoid the prying eyes of camp searching out answers none of them had.

Then the sky went bloodshot, and everything went to shit all over again.

It went like this:

Daisy was the first to burst into the tent, and found Jon and Oliver bathed in a growing pool of blackening blood. 

Martin was second to follow, finding the same, but with the addition of Daisy collapsed to her knees, doubled over and spitting foam at the mouth.

Basira was the last, and took in the scene with calculated horror. 

It went like this:

First: all of it. Blood and bodies. She’d seen so many before, nothing new, there.

Then: Daisy, keeling forward, eyes rolled to whites, mouth slicked back in a feral grimace.

Finally: Martin, cradling Jon’s head, saying nonsense things like “He can’t be dead.” and “What do we do?”

Then, it went like this:

Evacuation, but hardly the one they’d planned for. The camp, for all its diligent preparations, descending into everyone-for-themselves. Avatar and Untouched, alike, turning on each other. Supplies ransacked. Stances taken.

And then the Avatars began to fall. 

And the Untouched fled. 

Till the place was deserted. 

And, all the while, the sky wept hazel. Watching.

Until, finally, it goes like this:

The safe house. By whatever miracles still exist in this wretched wasteland, they - she, Daisy, Martin, Jon - make it to Scotland. On foot, by car on the occasion they find an abandoned one that still works. It takes weeks, time they don’t feasibly have but have to spare anyway. It’s impossible. It’s a miracle. And despite her fit in the tent, Daisy grapples enough strength and coherence to succumb just far enough away from the Hunt to guard Jon’s unconscious body without tearing herself completely apart.

Till they arrive at the cabin, that is, where she promptly collapses, herself and Jon tangled in a gruesome embrace from which they do not wake.

Until Jon does. 

Until he and Martin emerge from the upstairs bedroom, clutching each other like lifelines, seeking out Basira who’s hardly budged from her station beside Daisy. Like a sentinel. Crying only when she thinks they can’t hear.

She’d been crying, in fact, just now, and finds it  _ immensely  _ rude being walked in on, was preparing a tirade to scare Martin off. But then there’s Jon, and she doesn’t know whether to weep again or scream. To hug him or drive her fist into his face. 

She wars with this, for several impossible seconds - just stares at Jon as Martin says things she does not hear, what for the roar of static in her ears. She wonders, distantly, if that’s Jon’s doing - if  _ he’s _ doing that - if he’s finally started to betray them properly.

She’s unable to address that thought further, because, behind her, there comes a stifled groan, and suddenly there are far more important things.

Suddenly, there’s Daisy.

The room fills with gasps. First and foremost, Basira’s, but Jon and Martin make a decent play at shock as Daisy groans again and reaches out an arm, grasping blindly.

Basira half whirls, half stumbles on her heel. Falls to her knees. Grabs Daisy’s hand. It’s rough with callouses that weren’t there before all of  _ this _ , and Basira cries against them, dries them with kisses, cries some more. All the while, Daisy lays there, breathing unsteadily, but the hint of laughter carries on each laboured exhale, and soon her other hand reaches over, rests atop Basira’s head, and pats at it. 

It’s stupid. It’s sweet. It’s ridiculous and lovely, and Basira’s chest feels like it might just cave right the hell in for the sheer drop of relief that’s plummeted to her toes and back up to her tear ducts, making her lightheaded and giddy.

“ _ Nnuhghh _ how long s’I out?” Daisy’s voice is shot halfway to hell with disuse, but to Basira, it’s music. A whole fucking  _ symphony _ for all she cares. 

For all the nights spent sleepless by her side, begging for her to stay, just a little longer, to just open her eyes, to ignore the blood, please  _ please _ … Basira won’t begrudge a single word that comes out of her mouth.

“Jon?”

....Except maybe that one.

What levity had limped its way into the room now flees in terror as each present body seizes - Basira’s, first and foremost.

“Daisy?” She tries, at last looking up to see Daisy’s head has fallen sidelong, that she’s staring.

Not at her, though, not at Basira, but just over her head, a gaze of the purest sadness etched into the lines that had not seconds ago been hardened by an impossible unconsciousness.

“Daisy,” Basira says, more firmly, and squeezes her hand, moves in and cups Daisy’s jaw, tries to force her eyes elsewhere.

But Daisy’s always been stubborn, hard headed and harder to steer from whatever path she’s set herself on. And this one doesn’t even seem to want to cross with Basira’s. 

Just Jon.  _ Always _ Jon.

A burning, awful rage overtakes Basira, and she stands fast, turns faster, and all but lunges for Jon, who startles but holds his ground as she closes in.

“You did this, you  _ bastard _ ,” Basira growls, so close to his face, the face that hides lies and treachery - that she wanted to  _ cut _ out the moment they cut away his bandages and saw the truth of it all. “You ruined  _ everything _ and still she wants  _ you _ ?”

“Basira, I-”

She rears back her arm, hand open, poised to strike, but something stops her.

It’s not Martin, who swiftly interposes himself between her and Jon. Nor is it any sort of self reflection or restraint.

It’s more tangible, more  _ wanted _ .

It’s Daisy. Those calluses pressing hard around her wrist, halting her fury. Then another hand snakes round Basira’s waist, and she’s turning, and she’s held so safely, so  _ closely _ , meeting those eyes again, watercolor stains of green and gold shining over with tears. 

“Basira,” Daisy says, low and shivery in the way that makes Basira’s very bones quiver. 

“Daisy,” Basira whispers back, and strokes her face, swallows hard on the heat in her throat as Daisy’s eyes flutter shut and she leans into the touch, cradling her cheek against Basira’s palm.

She moves, before anything can spoil this, before anything can  _ steal _ this from her again. Daisy’s lips are chapped, hardened from the smiles never worn there, but they give easily enough to Basira’s, fitting with practical tenderness. 

“Oh,” Daisy breathes, when Basira pulls away, not so much putting distance between them, but she doesn’t want to suffocate Daisy, either.

Basira gives a tiny, helpless laugh, “Yeah…”

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

Daisy.

“No.”

Basira.

Because she understands. This is so far beyond her, but she  _ understands _ . Because there’s no solution in baseless fury. There’s no solution, well,  _ period _ . But there’s coping. 

And there’s Daisy. And, for now, it’s enough.

It’s enough.

-

“Here, just, yeah, okay? Ah -  _ shit _ -”

Martin fusses, frets, wants to tear his hair out, as he helps Jon sit at the kitchen table. The moment Basira had been distracted, he’d quickly stolen them both away, equal parts furious with and terrified of her. He… can sympathize, sure. Had Jon begged for anyone else when he woke up - well. 

Well Martin wouldn’t begrudge him it, exactly but -

It’s not important. Doesn’t matter. What matters is soothing that harrowing expression on Jon’s face, the pallor that stole what little color had bled into it at the promise of seeing Daisy.

“Tea,” he says, uselessly, and rounds on the kettle like it’s personally offended him. It’s a stupid luxury - the generator has been struggling enough as is, and it’s this or cold showers- but it’s for Jon, god _ dammit _ . 

He’s halfway through filling the kettle when a ghost whispers up beside him. 

Staring silently through the window above the sink, Jon braces himself, white knuckled, on the counter’s edge.

“Jon,” Martin sets the kettle down and reaches for him.

Jon lets himself lean against Martin, but he doesn’t stop staring, doesn’t relent his grip on the counter, as though Martin can’t possibly be enough to steady him.

The thought makes Martin’s very teeth ache, and he banishes it to the dark and dismal corner of his mind that’s been lurking around more of late. But with Jon awake it’s… it’s been tamed, somewhat, a blossom of hope unfurling in the midnight of his terror. 

“He’s dead, isn’t he,” Jon says, so quiet Martin has to press his ear to the top of his head to hear him. That’s all. Nothing more, of course, no ulterior motive of need-to-be-as-close-as-possible.

“Oliver,” Jon clarifies when Martin offers no reply.

“Yeah, he is.”

Basira.

And Martin turns as Jon’s eyes remain fixed on the window to see her and Daisy shuffling into the kitchen. Basira fusses the same as Martin, immediately steering Daisy into a chair, and this relieves Martin terribly much. They’re all still on the same side. They are all still hurt and loving and  _ scared _ .

“Have a pretty good idea what did him in, too,” Basira continues, curtly. “Maybe care to explain?”

“ _ Basira _ ,” Martin hisses, and she glares right back.

“No - I -” Jon turns, too, and his gaze locks on Daisy, her own trained on her hands as they fail to settle on the tabletop.

“I’ll tell you,” he continues, still watching Daisy, and his good eye shines over with fresh, wet, guilt. 

“I’ll tell you everything.”

-

And tell he does, in even greater detail than he did with Martin. Granted, theirs was a less… coherent reunion, and as much as it pains Martin to watch Jon struggle through his own personal statement, he… really needs to know more. All of it. Whatever Jon is willing to divulge. Whatever he can manage.

So they, all four of them, gather at their respective sides around the table, Basira stationed behind Daisy, clutching her shoulders as Daisy lolls from side to side, apparently without noticing. Martin stays beside Jon, of course, one of Jon’s hands between his own, and then both as his recounting progresses into realms of unbearable horror.

Still a victim of circumstance, Jon prefaces it with his initial anxieties, what led him to take on such a fool’s errand in the first place. Several times, Martin wants to interject with a “How the hell can you still think of yourself like that?” but it’s not the time. Will never be the time. There’s just now and Jon and everything he was willing to endure for everyone else’s sake.

When he arrives at the confrontation with Magnus, the air in the room goes decidedly palpable, dust motes dragging over skin, the vague ozone of the outside-upset world (still eye infected) fizzling in through the cracks and seams of the cabin and enveloping them all in clenched-teeth shivers. 

Even Basira, set in stone this whole time, fairly gasps as Jon steadies himself through full-body shudders to say how sorry he is that he couldn’t save them all. How he was too cowardly. How he couldn’t leave them just yet. How he thought he could contain Magnus. How he hoped he was strong enough. How he doesn’t know doesn’t know, just doesn’t fucking  _ know _ what to do. Doesn’t know if Magnus will infect him fully. Doesn’t want to live like this. Doesn’t want to  _ d- _

Martin stifles the last of it, pulling Jon so close against himself he winds him a bit - a comical grunt of exertion sounding out through the sobs.

“Tell me,” he says anyway, into Martin’s damp shoulder. “Tell me what happened after. I have - have to know.”

Martin shoots Basira a death glare, but she looks only… sad. So sad. Bewildered, with the wind punched out of her sails. 

It’s humanness that compels her. Not the vile, starving thing that desires only to claim so many souls for itself. Not the Watcher and its  _ wants _ . It is not these things that inspire her to leave Daisy and walk over to Jon’s side of this battle.

It’s just her. Just the pain, the… the -

Yes, even  _ that _ . Because she does, somewhere, somehow, love Jon. Not for himself, and  _ definitely _ not the snide scholar she first met. Nor is it the starving thing subsisting on scraps of trauma when he thinks no one’s looking. 

Simply, she loves him as a human - as a breathing, beating being that just wants to be  _ better _ , wants to  _ do _ better. Not just for himself - in fact, never for himself - but for others, who are also loved. By him. By him, alone. Not the thing that lurks.

So she tells him. Lets the words flow like ashen silk from a tongue that is all her own. Tells him how Oliver died at his behest, his  _ influence _ , how they think the surge of  _ so much death _ and in so  _ wrong _ a fashion overwhelmed him. Then she tells of the others, the Avatars, how they faltered, too, succumbing to their ends. How, strangely,  _ blessedly _ , Daisy remained coherent, how he kept breathing, too.

Next: the escape.

Then: the betrayal. His bandages, removed. The truth revealed. 

How she wanted to  _ kill  _ him. 

How she  _ couldn’t _ .

Daisy wouldn’t let her. Martin wouldn’t let her.

_ She _ wouldn’t let her.

Then, finally: here.

Now, always now, because the past defines only insofar as you let it, and she refuses to let him sink into himself and the choices he had to endure to get here - to fucking  _ live _ . She won’t be a part of that to him. Won’t hurt him anymore than he’s already convinced himself he is deserving of. 

And she can’t trust him yet. Won’t, until they’ve carved Magnus out of the equation, but there’s two sides of this story, and one is hunched and helpless and penitent as a scolded child. Still the same old bloody Sims, isn’t he…

“I’m sorry,” is how she ends it, how she finally looks him in the eye and doesn’t flinch or glower or  _ hate _ .

“So am I,” he says.

And Martin holds him tighter.

And she holds Daisy tighter.

And, outside, those so many, colorful agonies that litter the sky stare down at all of them, at  _ him _ . 

And they watch as epiphanies transpire in the dingy, safe little cabin. Most of them hazel. Some of them, not. 

And one of them is blue.

But, for now, it is closed. 

_______________________________________________

Eventually, the cabin descends into a nervous balm of quietude. Basira and Daisy retire back to their room, presumably to spare themselves from the mortifying ordeal of being emotional in front of others. It’s odd, the apocalypse, and the ways that humanity still clings on. No matter the constant threat of death and pain and terror, people are still as reluctant to be embarrassed as if the sky  _ weren’t _ a portend of certain doom. Among other things.

It’s these  _ other things _ Jon wants to know more about, besides. Well, mostly, these. Martin can tell there’s a niggling ache to talk to Daisy - for whatever reasons he can’t quite fathom. Though she and Jon have had a bit of a Us Versus Them thing going since the end of the world kicked off. Which - fine. Jon’s allowed his secrets. Well… Martin pretends, anyway. But it’s not the time to address that. And he really does need to catch Jon up, properly, and try to piece together a narrative of what to do next - of what the  _ fuck _ to do about Magnus.

That surprises him most of all, in fact. How quickly he’s acclimated to Jon’s self sacrifice. Or, rather it surprises him how admirably he holds back wrecked sobs now that he’s able to talk to Jon about it, properly. He’s had three weeks to come to terms with this and ignore the chant of “ _ betrayal, betrayal, betrayal _ ” that’s eaten up most of his sleep during that time.

Because he knew Jon would not betray them, and now he  _ knows _ it.

But now they have to address the rest of it. 

_ What happened to the Others, Touched? _

_ What happens to the world? _

_ What - what happens to Jon…  _

“Do you still want that tea,” Martin prefaces.

Jon’s stood by the sink again, gazing out at the gloaming fields shifting from green to black in the relative mundanity of a waning light.

That’s new, too, isn’t it, like the sun’s working again. Martin supposes it never really stopped, but with the plethora of overhead doom blotting out most normal day and night cycles, seeing even a washed out pink bleed over the hills again is something of a novelty. 

For his part, Jon just stares wistfully through the smudged panes, lips slack and slightly parted in a way that makes Martin ache to kiss them. 

Instead, he clears his throat, touches Jon’s elbow, says, “Love?”

Just that. It’s all he needs, all he wants, and Jon blinks, long and slow, before turning to look at him.

“Tea?” Martin croaks, and,  _ Christ, good lord _ , the way Jon smiles. Just softly … Sod respectability or timing or  _ any _ of it. Leaning in, Martin cups Jon’s face with both his hands, and holds him there, holds him steady, as he kisses him. 

Jon laughs a little when they part, a warm puff of air against Martin’s chin.

“Ah, yes, actually,” he mumbles. “Tea would be lovely.”

Martin laughs, too, and kisses him again. And again. And again. Till the threat of tears tides over and he can actually pull away properly and start the herculean task of not-kissing-Jon-but-making-Jon-tea-which-is-the-next-best-thing.

At length, they’re sat around the table, again, two chipped mugs steaming between them, wafting a sharp scent of slightly scorched bergamot, but Martin ferrets out a hidden away bottle of honey and watches fondly as Jon pours well over half of its meager contents into his cup.

He doesn’t drink it, yet, but that’s okay. Baby steps.

Then Jon says, “Helen died,” so that’s baby steps well out the bloody window.

Still, Martin tries to steer them onto easier ground, though his hand shakes terribly as he reaches for his tea.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, cuts right to it, because he  _ knows _ Jon and his needless martyr complex.

“Ha,” it’s not a laugh, just a breath of air, but Jon looks awfully far away as Martin examines him, like he’s thinking of a way to counter that clearly objective fact.

“It  _ wasn’t _ , Jon.”

“You understand it though, don’t you,  _ Martin _ ?”

And Jon turns his eye on Martin, seizing him there under cold and scrutinizing duress.  _ Watched _ . Not like  _ that _ , but just adjacent to it, just enough to make Martin very,  _ very _ uncomfortable.

“Stop.”

Jon blinks, but his gaze does not thaw.

Again, “Jon,  _ stop _ .”

_ Blinks _ . And he’s back, his face horror stricken, appalled at whatever thrall just overcame him - what Martin  _ refuses _ to think is more than likely Magnus’s doing.

“Christ, Martin, I’m - I’m so sorry I -”

Martin lets him reach over for his hands, pause, then pull away again. Lets him find his boundaries, find the necessity of terror within himself. It  _ hurts _ to watch, but Martin can’t impede this. 

That was bad,  _ very _ bad, and Jon needs to know this, too.

“Was it him,” Martin asks, once Jon’s taken a long, grimacing sip of tea that is certainly too hot.

“I don’t know,” Jon whispers, sounds genuinely scared and lost, but Martin has to see this through, no matter the immediate consequences. If it can save them a lifetime of grief, they’ll have to contend with the present and its cruelties.

So, taking Jon’s hand, squeezing it, Martin presses, “What did it feel like.”

Jon shudders but nods, whispers, “Thin.

“Or, no, not - um - it was -” Jon’s brow pinches, consternation visible even beneath his bandages. “Like - wan or - or - Christ, I don’t want to say hungry -”

“Was it hunger, Jon?”

Martin’s heart skips up the back of his throat, but Jon shakes his head. It is a  _ firm _ movement, stiff with certainty, and Martin exhales.

“Like when you’ve gone a few days without proper care,” Jon says, “and you hate the thing you see in the mirror, gaunt and pale, but a part of you cherishes it, too - enjoys the  _ control _ of it.”

Martin swallows and can’t quite meet Jon’s eye as he asks, carefully, “Did you want to control me?”

“No.”

Jon stares hazel certainty through the top of Martin’s head, till Martin’s forced to look up and meet the full intensity straight on.

“Never that, Martin.  _ Never _ .”

“Well - ah - g-good,” Martin stammers, a flush creeping up his neck, coloring his cheeks.

Jon’s gaze wavers, flicks to the side, and must catch the blush settling in. All at once, the dam of his severity breaks, and he coughs into his hand.

“Ah - sorry -”

And Martin laughs, a genuine sound full of actual, honest to  _ fuck _ amusement. Martyr or not, Jon Sims never fails to be an absolute  _ idiot _ at their relationship.

Tentatively, Jon lets loose a laugh of his own.

“Christ, Magnus sure made a mistake with me, eh?” He says. “Can’t even stoop so low as to compel my own boyfriend.”

“Don’t be grim,” Martin accuses, but the flippancy warms the chill in his chest marginally. 

“Yes, sir,” Jon quips right back, and drowns his weak grin in a gulp of tea.

“I really missed this.”

Martin scoffs, “What, tea? You were unconscious.”

“No - I,” Jon’s expression is falling again, but a thread of calm remains laced through his worry lines. “Just - this. The cabin. You. Us. Without all - all of  _ everything _ .”

“None of this is your fault,” Martin says, and wants to reach out again, but the moment doesn’t feel right - feels too forced. Jon has to arrive at this on his own.

And he’s looking away again as he replies, “How can I believe that?”

“Because there’s nothing wrong with wanting to live,” Martin says, employing the best full stop he can muster, verbally.

“We’ll find a way to get Magnus out. And we’ll fix the whole damn world while we’re at it, but for now? You’re going to live, and you’re going to know you  _ deserve _ it, Jon.”

He expects to be a bit weepy, following all that, but instead a lightheadedness overtakes him, and he has to pull a few deep breaths before he can look at Jon again.

Who’s staring at him with - what is that - suspicion? Incredulity? Disbelief? Either way, it’s less than ideal from what Martin would want, but such is the stubbornness of the lamb who lashes itself upon the altar.

“Let’s…” Martin chooses his next words carefully, and as the last light from the setting sun seeps out of the room, casts them in shadow rather warmer than Martin would have expected, he decides that’s enough for today. 

“Let’s maybe get you back to bed,” he decides on. “S’been a long day.”

“I’ve been awake three hours, Martin,” Jon says dryly.

“Duly noted,” Martin shoots back, and Jon gives a thin smile.

“Alright,” he concedes, and lets Martin help him from his chair.

Sparing a moment to regret the tea and honey gone to waste, Martin leads him back up to the bedroom and gnaws viciously at his lip again as he releases Jon to his own devices of sitting-down-on-the-bed.

Because he last cleaned Jon’s eye yesterday morning. It’s… looking fine. Three weeks have provided ample time for the scabs and bruising to heal, but Martin’s still obsessive about antiseptic. The supplies of it - what they took from the medical tent before absconding - are running low, but that’s a problem for later. Now, he just wants to tend to Jon as much as he can. Keep him as safe as possible.

Which, judging by how heavily Jon sinks into the mattress, entails forgoing the emotional agony of removing Jon’s bandages - without the added bonus of removing-them-while-he’s-awake-and-can-see-the-horror-for-himself, and just… sleeping. Just letting the day fade to nothing for a while. There’s all of tomorrow for this, anyway. And the day after.

There’s so much time, Martin convinces himself - as he crawls into bed beside Jon and curls himself fully around his frail, warm body - so much time to make this better. So much time left together. So much. 

So much.

_______________________________________________

It’s Daisy who hears it first. The breath. The  _ blood _ .

Later, she’ll reflect on this like a bad omen, like a  _ joke _ . A real gut-punch of irony. For now, she’s bolting upright from erratic sleep, rousing Basira beside her who mutters something that goes unfinished as Daisy clamps a hand over her mouth.

“ _ Thomeone’th in the houthe, _ ” Daisy lisps, falling too easily back in the rhythm of tactical protocol.

Because she knows -  _ knows _ \- by the beat of her pulse clattering between her ribs, that their unwelcome visitor possesses just as much skill as she does, if not more. 

Because she can smell another Hunter from three miles away, and the  _ stench _ of this one wafts thick and heady into the room, seeping under the door.

“ _ Thtay here _ ,” she says and, before Basira can protest, slips out of the bed, slinking to all fours.

Well, crumpling, more like, but she fights the weakness in her limbs and hopes the late hour’s light obscures enough of her clumsy movements to deter Basira from realizing just how little strength she has to deal with this properly. 

But she has to. She’s the only one capable enough out of the four of them. She’s supposed to  _ protect _ , and now some foam spitting, half-formed sniffer dog has decided to challenge that? Perhaps it’s a good thing, then, that she hasn’t imbibed in so long.

The problem is, the door to the bedroom immediately faces the kitchen where the smell’s carrying from. So this has to be perfect, has to use whatever surprise elements there are available. Which… ah… the door. Yes, sure,  _ fine _ , if she slams it open loud enough to startle the Hunter, perhaps she’ll get a leg up.

Apparently, she’s spent far too long deliberating, because a hand rests on her shoulder, a hand holding something heavy. Metal and cold and elongated. She turns slightly to see Basira sidling off the bed, a gun muzzled in the grip she’s placed on Daisy’s shoulder, an expression of hateful pride slashed across her sleep-worn face.

“ _ Bathira _ ,” Daisy whispers, her heart pounding, each beat seeming to seek out the place where metal and skin connect. Where Basira’s fingertips ground her from the totality of the promised bullets.

Basira shakes her head, then nods. Then kisses her cheek.

Then, with a grin so grim it makes Daisy’s throat tighten, she says, “Fetch.”

The red Daisy sees is not so much a blinding rage as it is a calculated palette, distinct and measured, a step-by-step for swift, certain death.

She slips open the door to a hue-wash of pastel pink, subtle and contained, and stalks toward the kitchen on mauve swaths that bloom to deep ruby when she spies a hulking silhouette. She poises on a stain of brick red, her tendons coiling around copper rust. 

Then a splatter of crimson and scarlet crescendos across her vision as she pounces, making precise, immediate impact that sends the intruder slamming to the floor.

She’s on them in an instant, vermilion between her teeth as she pins their arms and tears into their left shoulder, ripping out a shriek along with it. 

She goes for proper dislocation, next, yanking both arms from their sockets with sickening, satisfying  _ pops _ . More screams. Ever more  _ red _ .

With them effectively immobilized, she goes for the gun tucked in her waistband, and has just fit the barrel behind their ear when she’s stunned from her reverie by a cool wash of chilling, ivory blue.

“ _ Daisy _ .”

It’s not Basira.

_ It’s not Bathira, either _ , she thinks dizzily, and her head lolls to the side to see - oh she can see now, the dark’s gone from the room.

And there’s Basira, bathed in the meek glow of the overhead light - a naked, bare bulb. But there’s also Jon. 

Jon. Jon. What’s Jon doing here? This isn’t for him. This is hers.  _ Hers _ .

He takes a step toward her, and she growls, swings the gun in his direction, and that gives him something to think better about. She sneers at his cowardice, and waves the gun again for good measure before digging it back into the scalp of her prey. 

“ _ S’mine, _ ” she snarls.

“Daisy,” Jon says again - won’t stop  _ staring  _ at her - and the shivery coolness thrums through her head again, like a migraine  _ pulse _ of relief. 

“ _ Gh’st’p _ ,” she groans, screwing shut her eyes so she doesn’t have to see  _ his _ , but he’s still  _ inside _ , rummaging around her rage, picking it up, packing it away, till there’s nothing left but an itchy sore where the blood beat heaviest, where it had gushed and ground away at her resolve to not do this, to  _ never _ again do this.

But it… it was for them. Her friends. She just… wanted to protect them.

“I know.”

She opens her eyes, and Jon’s there, palms upturned, and she lets herself fall into them, let’s him drag her away from the body beneath her, the one that is so much less  _ lucky _ than she. 

He deposits her in Basira’s firmly trembling arms, and she watches - like an image through glass and water and white noise - as Jon returns to the body of the Hunter. They must not be dead, which Daisy deduces with no small amount of frustration she can’t act on. That is, if the way Jon kneels cautiously beside them is any indication.

The rest reveals very little. Just Jon, beside the body, leaning so close, close enough for him to get his face ripped off if Daisy hadn’t taken care of their arms. A flicker of pride glows and then fizzles out in her chest as, suddenly, the smell - the  _ scent _ \- of pursuit clears from the room, the miasma of that insatiable thing dissolving like morning mist. With it, Daisy’s head clears almost as quickly. As do her legs give way, and Basira grunts - swears - as she weighs them both to the ground.

There’s a pair of feet she hadn’t noticed before, which she now realizes belong to Martin; he’s been here the whole time, too. But she’d been so focused on Jon. As does Martin appear to be the same, staring pale faced and wide eyed as Jon slinks back over. 

He looks… wild, thrumming with an energy Daisy can’t understand as his own because it  _ isn’t _ . The stink of something drifts from him - almost like the Hunter, but terribly  _ not-so _ . It fills her nose, her nausea, to capacity as Jon limps over to her, hunching amidst a shattered frenzy of cast shadows thrown about from the .

“ _ I’m sorry _ ,” he pleads, and stumbles to his knees in front of her. 

Daisy looks at him, recoils.

His bandages are missing. When did that happen? 

And he’s staring her down with such remorse, such  _ loathing _ , till she realizes she’s seeing both at the same time. One: hazel sweet contrition. The other: blue ivory derision. One pupil blown wide, the other struggling not to collapse in on itself. One. The other. And both.

“ _ Jon _ ,” she rasps, and reaches for his face, her hand more tremble than caress as she touches his right cheek and rubs the tears from beneath the eye that pleads. 

A lot… happens, then, so much that Daisy can’t keep track of more than a few sound bites, a few poorly conceived images. There’s Jon, yes, but there  _ isn’t _ as the blue unfurls and leers at her. There’s shouting, but it’s slightly too pitched down to be Basira, alone, though she’s doing an admirable job of  _ screaming _ and hauling Daisy backwards, away from Jon, who is Jon again but who also  _ was not _ . 

There’s… blood. Coursing through her head, slamming out a rhythm of  _ rip rip rip it out _ , that sends her vision fully to white and static and  _ rage _ . But the arms around her remain steadfast, and the memory of people she loves grounds her from succumbing to the irreproachable lust. 

They can’t stay her from the darkness, though, fast encroaching as breath stalls halfway down her throat, clatters out on a rough cough. 

Jon’s no longer in her line of sight, and this  _ infuriates _ her. She thrashes against Basira, against the darkness and fizz-hum of oxygen gone wrong in her blood. She needs to get to Jon - needs to  _ help  _ him. 

He’s  _ wrong _ and  _ scared _ and - and…

_ Starving _ , supplies the last of her coherence as she begins to flail less spectacularly, scream less passionately, the fight seeping out of her like a slow oozing cut. Till she’s fully limp and pooling in a useless tangle of her own limbs on the floor. 

Then Jon’s back, looks for all the world like he wants to  _ pounce _ , but instead he crouches, like he did beside the Hunter, and suddenly Daisy is so very afraid.

Save.. he’s covering his left eye, and she sees only the hazel. It’s red rimmed and watery, even in the weak light, but it’s the only one that watches her, and she sighs with such  _ relief _ , such gratitude as she slips away into the black. 

And as a tear drips thickly from Jon’s pleading gaze, her own eyes shut.

And it is so blissfully quiet.

_______________________________________________

Three hours have slunk by since the attack, as if they’re ashamed of themselves, as if they know the gravity each of them brings, passing Jon and Daisy by and sending them further out to the tides of uncertainty with each moment they don’t wake up again.

Martin and Basira spend them in the worse parts of delirium and exhaustion, their nerves fried beyond repair, their hope extinguished to the smoldering wreckage of desperation. But they… they hold on. Like a drowning man does upon a sinking life preserver. With apprehension at first, and then stubborn, resentful,  _ hateful _ resolve. Because if they just make it through this, if they can  _ use _ this time to reconvene and figure  _ something _ out, then it’ll be okay. It has to be okay. They didn’t watch their friends and comrades die, didn’t witness the utter destruction of the camp and everyone in it - they didn’t come all the way to the end of the fucking world for it  _ not _ to be. 

Eventually, morning breaks. They’ve done little else save dragging their unconscious partners back to their respective beds, and they get even less done after that. They’re just trying to salvage the pieces of the aftermath. That’s all. It shouldn’t be this  _ hard _ .

There’s the Hunter’s body to dispose of, anyway, a task Basira firmly resigns herself to doing, as if she’s Daisy’s personal gamekeeper. Really, she just wants an excuse to get out of the cabin. Watched as she is by the bloodshot sky, and even though the chittering loom of the Lonely carries on the wind scouring over the hills, it’s better than being cooped up with Martin’s dolent ineptitude. He’s found his purpose in curling up around Jon and sniffling into his shoulder which - okay, fine,  _ sure _ \- and maybe Basira wishes she could do that, too, dammit, but what does it ultimately  _ do _ ? Nothing. It won’t wake Daisy, and it won’t explain the body she’s having to toss in a ditch.

It’s the nearest thing to the cabin that counts as “a good place to put a dead body to get it  _ away _ from the cabin” and she watches, solemnly, as it crumples and bleeds out atop the gravel. Her old instincts berate her for not investigating further, but what’s there to glean? They had mostly succumbed to some half-animal hybrid form, and whatever Jon did to them, there’s no way to understand cause and effect. He’ll just have to answer for it when he wakes up.

So. Good. Now. With  _ that _ ordeal done with, she can contend with it easier, can put it down to rote bullet points in the back of her mind as the forefront tries valiantly not to break down into sobs and pleas.

-a Hunter broke in: not good

-Daisy smelled them: not bad

-Daisy went fully feral:  _ not _ good

-Jon… stopped her: ...good

-Jon killed the Hunter: not bad,  _ definitely _ not good

-Jon and Daisy are both comatose… again:  _ fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck _

It’s too much, no matter how she tries to compartmentalize, and she withers to her knees, cradling her face in her hands, shoulders quaking, throat raw, eyes stinging without any tears to make this worthwhile.

Around her, a cloying fog endeavors to shroud her in its baleful comfort, its simpering ruse of understanding, and she snaps back to attention. Lifts her head. Looks up.

The sky, for all its wounds, is staring back. 

Beneath its force, she’s frozen, transfixed, her fear and sadness suspended on the tip of her tongue, like she wants to spit it to the heavens and have it  _ gone _ and done with. 

Then.  _ Flash _ . Of blue. And the spell unravels, shattered by its own hubris, and she scrambles to her feet, heart pounding out a rhythm that she thinks, distantly, might be the same one Daisy hears all the time. 

It carries her swiftly back to the cabin, and she slams the door as she barricades herself back inside. She’s not going to call for Martin, not going to show her hand like that, but she needs to tell him what she just saw. Needs to tell him her spinning thoughts and the horrible conclusions she doesn’t want to make alone.

She counts her breaths, one two one two, back and forth, willing her heart to still, for Martin to shake a fucking leg. 

Finally, she breaks.

“Martin!”

No response.

“Martin! God _ dammit _ !”

Her pulse leaps at the muffled sound of squeaking springs and feet hitting the floor. Which is good enough for her, and she ascends the stairs three at a time, arriving breathless in the bedroom where Jon lays corpse-like, Martin ever vigilant at his side.

“What,” he snaps, his whole face puffy and blotched. He doesn’t even try to hide it.

It hurts to see. Basira doesn’t exactly hold him in any special esteem, isn’t even sure if they’re friends per se, but she’s only human. And so is he. And so is the ache that settles upon seeing him so helpless. They’re rather alone in this together, aren’t they, the whole… humans-with-monstrous-lovers thing. And it’s just them until the monsters stir, again.

“I’m - I’m sorry,” she begins because it sounds like the right thing to say, but she can’t go the whole nine yards of pity, so just barrels straight on.

“I… saw something,” she gestures to the window with its curtains tightly drawn. “In the sky. Martin. I need to -  _ we _ need to -”

“What, we need to  _ what, _ Basira? Because I’m pretty fucking sure we’ve already figured it out.”

Basira backpedals, the sheer  _ disdain _ in Martin’s voice landing like a fist. 

But she finds her footing and fires back, “Have we? You sure about that? Because I’m pretty sure we haven’t even scratched the surface of this. Jon’s killed three avatars, and I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want Daisy to be his next meal.”

“What?” This time, it’s genuine disbelief that laces Martin’s voice, his expression utterly fraught.

“I… I don’t know,” Basira says, quieter, now. Because she doesn’t, not fully, but the pieces are piling up, spilling over, and several of them have aligned too closely to be ignored. Helen. Oliver. The nameless Hunter. All of it under duress of Magnus’s influence. It just doesn’t add up.

Or, rather, it  _ does _ , and Martin has to know it, too.

He’s too much a liability, though. Right now. Not even 24 hours after another death. She has to approach this with tact, and with mercy.

So she says, “I need to see his eye.”

Which strikes like a knife between Martin’s own, the effect immediate, defensive, and scared.

“Why.”

“I’ll explain in a minute, just -” she wagers a step forward, and he lets her approach, lets her rest her hands on his shoulders. “There’s something we need to see.”

He stares at her for an excruciating, unblinking moment, lashes brimming over with tears that don’t fall until he nods. She nods, in turn, crouches down, and hugs him. He doesn’t hug her back, but that’s okay. It’s a process. They’ll get there.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and almost laughs as he shrugs in her embrace.

“Me too,” he manages, and she takes it as her cue to reestablish their distance and take her chances while Martin’s still amenable. Because he won’t be after this. Whatever is revealed, it’s going to change everything. 

“Do you… want to do it,” she says, because that seems like the least she can do for him, demanding so much of his torn emotions.

He scoffs, shrugs again, says, “No. But, I don’t want you to, either. So. Yeah.”

“Alright,” Basira nods at Jon’s prone form, which looks so peaceful, so undisturbed by the horror he’s committed himself to. 

“Ready when you are,” she adds this for whatever comedic effect there might be. Which, as it turns out, is very little, but Martin still squares his shoulders, visibly steeling himself. 

Gingerly, he removes Jon’s fresh bandages, re-wrapping them carefully because they have so few left; it’s a terrible waste to keep doing this, but they need to see.

And… indeed, they do.

And so, too, are they  _ seen _ .

By the thing staring back out of Jon’s face. Unclosed.  _ Smug _ . While half of Jon’s face lays slack in sleep, the rest of him - the  _ infection _ of his atonement - blinks wide awake, ice and ichor and triumph: Jonah Magnus watching the world from the throne of Jon’s imprisoned expression.

“Oh…”

Martin.

“Fuck.”

Basira.

And the eye within Jon  _ smiles _

-

There’s the initial shock, of course.

Screams. Of a sort, but then Martin’s throat is so sore from so much of that already, it’s more of a garbled  _ yelp _ , as he reels back, stumbling off the bed. Basira gasps, and Martin looks wildly at her, but she’s staring at the traitor in Jon’s face. 

It… isn’t doing anything. It just watches, a vainglorious sheen casting its blue in particularly stark relief from the rest of Jon’s dark complexion. But nothing more. Nothing… sinister, besides  _ itself _ . Being open. And all that.

“Okay,” Basira eventually says, and Martin stares pleading daggers all over again. 

Then, “I need you to cover it back up.”

“What?” 

Martin’s voice escapes him as more squeak than syllable.

“Cover it,” Basira repeats.

And he wants to protest, wants to say  _ anything _ , but his jaw’s rusted at the hinge with clench-teeth terror, so he mutely goes about stuffing the old cotton into the socket and winding the gauze around Jon’s head. It’s a shoddy job, and he winces at the prospect of the bandaging touching the actual eye. But then it’s not Jon’s. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts Magnus.

“Okay.”

Basira keeps saying this, and Martin wants to shout at her, to tell her off, because it’s  _ not _ okay, and if she would please just take a moment and properly break down, he’d really, bloody appreciate that.

Instead, he lets her beckon him numbly from the bed, out into the hall, and even further, back down to the kitchen. He doesn’t quite realize he’s there until she’s pulling out a chair at the table, staring expectantly at him, and his better instincts kick in, telling him to run. Back up to Jon. To save him save him  _ save him _ .

“We need to talk,” Basira is saying, somehow, through the thrum of Martin’s adrenaline. 

He actually manages to scoff at that. They’ve just discovered Magnus is probably manifesting whatever sort of autonomy within Jon, and Basira wants to have a chat? Maybe a nice cuppa while they’re at it? He does not take the seat, nor does she, both of them standing to attention at a stalemate.

“Why,” he says, instead, and Basira inhales sharply.

“Because,” she says slowly, building up a tone of truth Martin doesn’t want to hear. 

“Jon has killed three avatars while in possession of Magnus’s eye. First Helen, then Oliver -”

“He didn’t kill Oliver,” Martin protests weakly.

“All the signs point to it,” Basira counters, anyway. 

“You don’t  _ know _ that.”

“Try this, then, Martin: recall how he took statements out of avatars? Put them in - fuck I dunno - that trance?”

Martin does not want to remember - does not want to think about the progression of a thing that was so good for so many people who turned to terror in their desperation. Jon would never,  _ never _ use that to - to  _ kill _ . Not against the innocent. Not Helen. Not Oliver. Not even this nameless Hunter who, for all the signs pointed to the obvious, was under duress of the blood-thrall. Even then, Jon’s never killed. Because he wants to help, wants only to do good. He is  _ not _ that monster.

“...You see it, don’t you,” Basira says, from somewhere far away, and Martin’s gaze refocuses, meeting hers again.

“It’s not him,” she continues. “Whatever time frame we thought we were operating on, it’s starting, now. Magnus is taking hold, and we have to do something before Jon’s too far gone.”

“Like what,” Martin says under breath, so quiet and lost that Basira takes a step toward him.

“Like  _ what _ ,” he says louder, and she flinches back. “You want to tear Magnus out? You want to betray Jon like that? It will  _ kill  _ him, Basira. You - you heard him. He doesn’t - want - to  _ die _ . He finally doesn’t want to  _ fucking  _ die and, what you’d kill him because you  _ think _ he may have killed three avatars, two of which were already dying? Hell, when were you going to share this with me? Or did you literally just come up with this  _ bullshit _ because  _ you _ can’t face what’s happening with Daisy and want to take it out on the easiest target in this godforsaken hellhole?”

It’s Basira’s turn to stare, blankly stunned, her lower lip quivering, but Martin’s not done. Of  _ course _ he’s been thinking about this. Ever since they pulled back Jon’s bandages, he’s been tearing himself apart trying to rationalize it, trying to figure out a way that saves them all. But he knows that as long as Jon serves Magnus like - like this, then the fears are still tethered. Without Magnus, they lose Jon. And Martin will gladly endure a world of horror if it means Jon gets to share it with him.

_ Christ… that’s grim. _

“I’m not going to do anything,” Basira is saying, apparently having found her way back to the argument at hand, but as Martin returns his ire to her, it fizzles out almost immediately.

For though her voice is steady, she’s crying with far more certainty.

“I’m not going to  _ kill _ him, Martin,” she whispers, her posture a line of tight agony. “I just… don’t know what else to do.”

“Sit,” says Martin, his mouth running before his brain can catch up.

“What?”

“ _ Sit _ .”

She does, in the chair she’d offered him, and he nods.

“Tea,” he says next, because what the  _ fuck _ else is there?

The next few minutes lapse by with the sounds of boiling water - the generator distantly sputtering - and the gentle clink of cutlery stirring bitter tea leaves, Martin doing his utmost to make as little noise as possible, failing, and instead filling the deflated room with echoes of domesticity that comfort no one.

Basira still accepts the tea, much like Jon did, but there’s no more honey. Martin’s not even sure how she usually takes it, but it feels like a universal truth that honey would be acceptable at any time during the apocalypse, especially amidst their particular shitfest of a situation.

“Thanks.”

Martin.

“Sure.”

Basira.

A dense sort of… waiting encompasses them. Nothing portending, exactly, just the expectations of their own nerves and sorrows manipulating an atmosphere that, for all their intentions and purposeless terror, could be another awful plot twist come to ruin their carefully laid plans all over again.

But the shoe never drops and, finally, Martin makes the first move.

“I’m sorry.”

Basira answers him, swiftly, “I know.”

He laughs at that, a wry puff of air. “And you’re not?”

“No.”

But she continues, “Am I sorry for you? Of course. Am I sorry Jon’s suffering? No shit. But am I sorry for  _ seeing _ this? Am I sorry for telling you the truth? No, because it’d be a worse injustice to lie to you, Martin, and I’m not here to hand out hope.”

“So what about Daisy, then,” Martin spits back. “Hm? Do you have any hope for  _ her _ ?”

He laughs, a derisive sound as Basira shrinks back, her face hardening to ice, her cheeks still shining with tear tracks.

“Yeah,” Martin should hate the pride in his words, “s’what I thought. After all he’s done for us, and this is how you want to repay him?”

“That’s not what I -”

“You know what, Basira?’ Martin stands so fast from his chair it bangs against the table, nearly sending his mug shattering to the floor. “I don’t actually care what you mean. Because you’ve said enough.”

“Where are you going?”

She sounds so broken as she calls after him, Martin stalking from the kitchen. 

“I’m going to fucking  _ hope _ if that’s okay with you,” he throws the words over his shoulder like shrapnel, doesn’t even bother to turn around, just takes the stairs as fast as he can and curls himself by Jon’s side, faster.

He has to be quick about it, knows that if he takes too long staring at Jon’s prone form, he’s going to remove the bandages again, and there’s no telling what he’ll do if Magnus is still watching.

Besides, Jon seems fine, otherwise. Asleep… again… yes, okay, not ideal  _ that _ , but there’s no telltale whimpering that accompanies his nightmares, no cold sweat broken across his scars. Just… a pantomime of peace, and for the time being, Martin will take that. 

Sod Basira, sod Daisy, sod that Hunter and Helen and Oliver and  _ everyone _ who can’t see  _ everything _ Jon’s done for them. Because Martin sees. He knows. And he won’t leave Jon, not again.  _ Never _ again.

_______________________________________________

_ Oh dear, I think they might be on to your little charade. _

_ Or do you even realize, yet? I suppose hunger can blind you a bit, can’t it, and we’re terribly ravenous. Aren’t we. _

_ Don’t think me ungrateful, of course not. That was a delicious little morsel, but even I’ll settle for scraps, and you’ve rather inconvenienced me, here. _

_ Hm… _

_ Ha.  _

_ Do you know of fainting goats? What am I saying, of course you do. Quite the funny spectacle, and an even stupider defense tactic, if I’m honest. But, no matter, it’s not important. Just something to ruminate on.  _

_ Oh but… still they think of you the lamb! Well - Martin anyway. Our dear Detective does always see through the ruse, though, doesn’t she? And I’m ever so keen to see what your little watchdog makes of you snatching the blood right out from under her.  _

_ No matter, of course. I’ll take care of that when she gets out of hand. _

**_We_ ** _ will, my Archive. Together _

_ I have every faith in you. _

_______________________________________________

He’s so tired of waking up. Tired of the places he finds himself in. Tired of the results that have led him to yet another bed, yet more nightmares. Save these don’t dissipate when he cracks open his eye. They careen around his head, iron-clad promises of terrible things to come, whispering and gloating about the atrocities he’s going to be made a part of.

At the very least -  _ scraps, isn’t it? _ \- they’re quieter, apparently distanced by the sheer inanity of his consciousness despite all the ways he should be very much dead. Or brain dead. Or what have you.

It’s a snare of hope, a tuft of fur caught in barbed wire, yes, but it’s evidence enough that the prey’s still escaped. That there’s still something to rectify.

And there’s the firm warmth of another body by his side. Always, Martin.

He… hesitates. 

He’s ruined so much. Why sully this, as well? Why pull his love so selfishly from the sanctity of sleep just to bombard him with more horrible truths, with more secrets, with more  _ blame _ ? 

The universe grants him a small mercy, and Martin stirs on his own, turns groggily, blinks blearily. And then less so, as his eyes lock with Jon’s.

“Oh my g-”

Jon doesn’t let him finish. Leaning down, he curls his palms around Martin’s jaw, and takes a delicate, tear stained kiss from his mouth. He tastes of stale tea, Martin does, and it’s this that steels Jon’s resolve entirely, the sheer, stubborn  _ humanity _ of it.

“I love you,” he says against Martin’s still-so-surprised mouth.

“And,” he wavers, but only to take another kiss. And another. Till he’s ready to breathe his burden in full. 

One last kiss, languorous, lingering, that sips a sigh from Martin softer than dew on spider’s silk.

It’s the greatest agony to pull away from it, to finish.

“I need to tell you something.”

-

Jon makes him sit at the foot of the bed. Well, not entirely, but near it, anyway. Nearer to  _ it _ , than to Jon, and that’s unacceptable, but Jon’s adamant, his weathered face set, determined in a way that makes Martin’s heart peek out between his ribs with rapid uncertainty.

“I have not been honest with you,” Jon begins.

They’re holding hands, bridging the gap between each other at two points of tangled contact, their fingers a web that bears no further comment. 

“And it’s not because I wanted to - to lie to you. I just couldn’t come to terms with any of it. I thought I was strong enough to beat this, but it’s… you need to know the totality of this, Martin. You deserve that.”

“Jon-”

“I killed Helen,” Jon says, stunning the air between them like an electric shock.

Still, he continues.

“She - she was already dying, yes. But I took her statement. I took the fear within her so - so she wouldn’t have to endure being wrenched apart from the Spiral. It was pity, Martin. It was mercy. And she died as a  _ person _ . I’m not justifying what I did, but you have to know how this began, you have to know I didn’t mean for the others - that I - I didn’t know -”

Martin squeezes his hands. Because it’s the only thing he has. Shock and betrayal and horror run amok, but he doesn’t  _ know _ the extent of it. He has to hear Jon. He has to see this all. They’re all so vulnerable. He has to know. For Jon.

Whether Jon senses his conviction, the meager conclusion of faith Martin’s made bloodied peace with, or if it’s just the sheer intensity of his determination, either way, he soldiers on, though the rich tenor of his voice gains a distinct tremble.

“I knew something was wrong,  _ really _ wrong with Oliver. Not just… with what I wanted him to do, but the intensity of his fear, Martin. It was…  _ ambrosial _ .”

Martin very decidedly ignores the wistful sigh that parts Jon’s grimace in a  _ smile _ , like he can almost see the crow’s feet beneath the bandages over Jon’s face. 

“And then… the Hunter. I had to protect us. Daisy was going too far, and I had to step in but -”

“It wasn’t you who took their fear,” Martin finishes for him.

Jon can’t look at him.

“It’s Magnus.”

Jon nods, and Martin exhales. 

He takes a moment to consider this, but, ultimately, it changes nothing. His opinion of Jon is set in stone, carved there by careful hands and resolute strength, a trust and bond forged in their sheer, defiant togetherness. 

“Did he - was he controlling you,” still, Martin needs answers, and he trusts Jon to give them now. In full. 

“I… don’t know,” Jon chances a glance up at Martin. “It - I felt the hunger. My  _ own _ hunger. I… desperately needed a statement, Martin, but - but Magnus he - tapped in? I don’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t just him, and it wasn’t just me. By the time I realized he was pulling the strings, I couldn’t stop.”

Jon is not crying. Decidedly, he is not, but Martin has aligned himself to less stoic inclinations, and blinks for the both of them, his eyes burning with exhaustion and defeat. 

“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” Jon says, strained and whispery, his voice like torn silk. “I wanted to help Helen. I wanted Oliver to help  _ me _ . I - I thought I could subdue Magnus, that I could rationalize those losses. But I’m - I’m still just another monster.”

“No, you’re not.”

This, from neither of them.

This, from Daisy, who leans heavily in the doorway, supported by Basira, their approach evidently made in silence, and Martin goes hot at the collar at the thought of them sneaking up, hearing this, especially after Basira’s little stunt. 

“What do you want,” he spits, more at Basira, but Daisy’s rather in the way, and frankly he doesn’t care who weathers the worst of his flak. 

“I want,” says Daisy slowly, “to talk to him.”

Though every word is labored with crushing effort, she thrusts her chin at Jon, her expression incalculable, and Basira’s, too, for that matter, although Martin recognizes the pangs of panic in her flitting eyes, the way they jump around the room, from person to person, only settling long enough on Daisy before starting their suspicious circuit again.

“And  _ what _ ,” says Martin, unable to stem the tide of his irritation, “do you want to talk to him about.”

He shoots another  _ look _ at Basira, trying to glean something from this display, any morsel of what she and Daisy may have plotted, what Basira might have said to sway Daisy’s opinion of Jon.

Until Daisy winces,  _ growls _ , and falls to her knees, a soft cry wounding the room and its gathered distrust, thrusting them all back together, their ragtag little team of survivorship always, somehow intact.

“I want,” says Daisy, whispers Daisy, cries Daisy, as Basira pulls her close. But they still hear what she says next. And conviction rings out like a struck bell.

“I want to give him my statement.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> -suicidal ideation  
> -eye horror  
> -implied sexual content  
> -gun violence  
> -blood  
> -general despair/depression/hopelessness/etc
> 
> Title modified from "Perfect Home" by Foreign Fields.


	3. To fight; there’s nothing left to lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still trying to keep with timely editing and posting! So here's another 14k~ If you're enjoying this, please do leave kudos and/or a comment, both really brighten up my day amidst the crushing despair of quarantine <3
> 
> (As always, shout out to Scraps and your invaluable notes)
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

They never had a proper first date, never really… officiated their relationship in any such mundane way. It just evolved, mostly out of necessity, though Daisy would like to think there was some element of cheesy, romantic tension. Of the two of them, she was always more emotionally available. But, in the same way Basira learned to turn a blind eye to Daisy’s blind rage, and the way Daisy conceded to Basira’s calm, cool persona, it was just… inevitable. It suited them. Like a handshake, or a knife between the ribs. It just fit.

And they always knew theirs was borrowed time. Never voiced it aloud, never brought it up, but you don’t work in the police with all its indulgences without suspecting something to drop, shoe or otherwise. They knew it would end badly, they just never quite knew _how_.

Basira always expected Daisy would go too far, and Daisy was content to accept the same.

And then the Institute.

And then Jon.

A coffin.

Bloodless.

Blood _ful_.

All of Daisy’s strength for naught, all her self flagellation a worthless pursuit, the denial she suffered for months and months - tamping down the blood, gnawing herself to the _bone_ of desperation - to just cling a little harder, dig her heels in a little deeper to humanity. _For_ humanity. For Basira… 

Little did she realize, she’d just been carving out her grave the whole time.

And now… it’s gone again. The tether frayed, her soul leaking through the puncture wounds. And it is so, so red. And she is so, _so_ scared. Of becoming _it_ again, of hurting and tearing and _Hunting_ . Even if it’s for the last time, even if Jon really has upset the entire world, and she’s screaming on borrowed blood, she doesn’t want to end on _those_ terms.

She can’t do it. She doesn’t want it anymore. Doesn’t want to sing its wolfish praises, to tear out her lungs in its rapture. 

None of them understand what it’s like. Not Martin. Not… Basira.

But Jon can know. He can take this from her. He can give her _peace_.

It hurts to say it out loud. Of course it does. She’s betraying so much, so _many_. The Blood, weak as it is now. Basira. Jon. But not herself. So she lets Basira wrap around her emaciated frame, the body she’s starved for so long and that she can finally put to rest. And she feels bad, she does, for lying to Basira, for saying what needed to be said in order to make that impossible journey up the stairs. Really, she was only half listening to Basira’s rant about Jon’s this and that and whatever Magnus has done. 

Her mind is made up. She won’t let the blood have her, won’t let _it_ have the satisfaction of leaving her, either. She _will_ die a human. And it will be good.

It will be good.

_______________________________________________

_I’ll kill you_.

Jon’s heard this a lot in his heyday, sometimes in jest, mostly in earnest, occasionally misguided, but now? It’s not even spoken aloud. Instead, it resonates like a hymn from Basira, from the hateful, _vengeful_ eyes as anguish twists her face around something rotten and defiled of empathy.

He wants to tell her how sorry he is. That he will not do this, but even he’s not so sure. It’s all too… placid. The way it’s transpired. The catharsis of confiding in Martin, the sureness of Daisy’s request. He doesn’t feel as scared as he ought to.

Doesn’t feel scared at all, in fact. 

A low, resonant chuckle bubbles up his throat. Sans his meaning to, sans his knowledge that it was perched in his lungs at all. 

But it’s out. And it is not his.

“ _Oh_ ,” he does not say. “ _That’s very dear of you, Daisy_.”

At the foot of the bed, Martin jolts. In the distance, by the door, Basira is unrecognizable, consumed in a cloud of something terrible. 

Daisy is the smallest of them all. Feeble. Practically offering herself.

“ _Tell me_ ,” Jon does not continue, directing _his_ words directly at her, “ _do you really wish to die? Or are you so much of a coward you can’t swallow the lead, yourself_.”

There’s a struggle breaking out in Jon’s periphery, his eye plunging into static, _his_ other pulsing beneath its bandages.The bed dips abruptly at his feet, and he hears something distant and grunted, but the roar of the voice that _is not his_ drowns it out. 

“ _I will admit_ ,” he continues not to say, his mouth _his_ own, a used and violent thing, “ _a Hunter makes quite the martyr, almost as lovely as my dear Archive, here but_ -”

Pain. Absolutely exquisite _pain_. Like something from a fairytale, or a poem, layers upon layers of white hot nerves Jon had never thought possible blooming like ripe glass, like turgid rust, tendrilling out from a distant point of contact against his bandages.

A fist, he realizes.

And there’s a weight across his lap.

A barrage of expletives like baying hounds. 

Oh.

It’s Basira.

Oh she’s… she’s punched him in the eye. _His_ eye.

…fuck. 

What… does that even mean? 

It’s the last thought he has before hands bear down upon him, one pinning him at his sternum, the other clawing loose his bandages. This brings a fresh wave of molten _pain_ , and a scream dislodges from his stopped up throat. He thrashes. Tries to, anyway, but more hands seize him, less sharp and keen, this pair. 

He recognizes them, instantly.

Martin’s.

And something must have been listening in, beyond the illustrious voyeur, Itself. Something that enjoys a good _punchline_ , a nice joke, a smidge of irony with a knowing smirk slapped on for punctuation. Because, try as he might to succumb to the static embrace of his shutting down mind, he can’t. The hands won’t let him, his _eyes_ won’t let him, as his vision fills out and cool air hits the core of Magnus’s pupil like a hot poker.

He screams again. And again. Because it’s all he has as the hands continue to betray him, and the faces of his friend, his love, fade into view. One of them is crying, the other is still enshrined in a cloud of fury, but it’s not… _at_ him. It’s _about_ him.

The realization cuts a blade through his panic, and Magnus’s eye snaps suddenly shut, the pain still blooming dully beneath the lid, but it’s subdued. Contained. _Quieted_.

_She…_

_...will pay…_

_…..for that…_

_…………..Archive._

And then Magnus is silent. Not gone. Not defeated. But it’s the clearest Jon’s head has felt since he took Magnus into it, and a soft _oh_ expels from his lips like a fever broken. 

“Jon.”

Martin.

His hands remain, firm against Jon’s shoulders, but they’re softening around the bruises they’ve surely stamped to the fragile skin. It hurts, in a don’t-want-to-lose-you kind of way, and Jon tries to surge up into his touch again. Whatever heart they share between each other, Martin’s must read his desperation (either that or Jon’s figured out how to make an expression besides desolate helplessness) because Martin does not let him go, instead crowds close, shoving Basira aside and pulling Jon into a careful embrace.

“It’s quiet,” he murmurs into Martin’s neck, and Martin heaves such a _thankful_ sound.

It’s not a lie. It _hurts_ , but it’s quiet. Things feel… transparent, in a way he can’t contend with right now, but it sure is… something.

Then, “Jon?”

Daisy. 

Shit. Fuck. Right, _Daisy_. She - she asked - she said -

With the weight of the world in his eye, Jon raises his head, looks at her. Basira’s back at her side, still rife with _hatred_ , but Jon understands it now, and he thinks she might, too, because she’s not stanced like a bodyguard. Well, okay she _is_ , but with more this-is-the-love-of-my-life-and-I’ll-tear-your-eye-out-if-you-hurt-her connotations. Or whatever to that effect. It’s all starting to blur, a bit. A lot has… happened, in the last few hours Jon’s managed to stay awake.

So he answers back, “Daisy,” testing the waters, feels a cold current of betrayal snap at his metaphorical touch, but mostly it’s a gently turbulent ebb and drown of something inevitable. Something Daisy’s got her teeth into. And she always did have quite the grip… 

But that’s all Jon’s allowed to say before Basira bristles once more, interposes herself between Jon’s line of wounded sight and Daisy’s wounded person, and he says nothing as she herds Daisy through the door. 

“We are _not_ going to talk about this,” she threatens, tone heavy with tears Jon cannot see. 

Then she’s gone, taking Daisy with her and leaving Jon to flounder in the wake of his world turned forever on its head.

It’s a calm moment, all things considered, till a clatter of whispers wriggles between his ears, coming from the direction where Martin is sat.

“No,” the word is out before Jon realizes, and Martin frowns at him, mouth slightly agape.

“No?”

“I’m not tired, Martin,” Jon continues, despite himself and the comparative severity of everything else that’s happened. “And if I have to spend another moment in this damn bed, I _will_ go fucking insane.”

Martin… laughs. Then scowls. Then laughs again, helpless.

“Don’t - don’t do that, Jon, I _hate_ when you do that.”

Because he doesn’t, really, they both know it. Because he doesn’t begrudge Jon for inadvertent clairvoyance, and with such desperate, saccharine thoughts swarming around his head, he practically broadcast the image of swaddling Jon with blankets and tea into his mind.

“Still,” says Jon, abruptly energized with the prospect of a distraction, a _detraction_ from the itch building behind _his_ eye. “Don’t even think about it. In fact, _eurgh_ , help me up.”

“I don’t think that’s a -”

“ _Help_ me, Martin.”

Martin does, swiftly, obediently, but Jon knows there was no compulsion involved. It’s just them. For now.

“G _hh_ , _Christ_ ,” he stumbles as needling static shoots up from the soles of his feet, his knees locking together. 

The sensation makes him think of a tape- no _no_. Champagne, it feels like champagne, which makes him think of stars, then of the sky, and, clinging to Martin’s arm as much as dragging him along, Jon hobbles over to the window. Looks out.

It’s early evening, and the eyes are bedding down. Or… no they’re… sparser, than before, the only _Looking_ ones being a few bulbous, strained irises in the east, each a varying shade of hazel-green contrition. No blue. Not in the visible miles at his disposal, anyway. 

“We should go for a walk,” he says, just beneath his breath in case they want to pretend he didn’t say that.

It doesn’t make _sense_ in all this damn… _context_ , but now he wants nothing more than something simple. In the past 24 hours, he’s killed someone, fed Jonah Magnus their fear, confided his seditious state of mutualism to his friends, lost one of those friends (probably) and had another beg him to kill her, too. Got bloody _punched_ right in the body-hopping-parasite, which seems to have? Subdued it? Somehow?

He just wants… to not be here, cooped up, with the prospect of another confrontation at any turn.

“Please,” he begs as softly as he can without sounding wholly pathetic. “Just… some fresh air, _please_ , just five minutes, I don’t - don’t care, I just… please.”

Martin considers him with a searching expression for - in Jon’s opinion - a longer than necessary amount of time.

“How are you -” Martin begins, then shakes his head. 

A crescendo of secrets leaks from his nose, his ears, in meta-tangible wisps that Jon eyes hungrily, but he doesn’t pounce upon them, doesn’t even want to hear the rest of that question, because he knows it’s just going to keep leading them down the rabbit hole of this misery, and he wants - a goddamn - _break_.

“Jon, this really isn’t sa-”

“Whatever’s out there,” Jon cuts in, irritably, not at all registering his words, “I’ll sic Magnus on them.”

A beat.

“That’s not funny.”

“I… know,” Jon deflates, lets his cheek fall against Martin’s arm, staring out at the hills where, once upon a time, he and Martin were happy, finding deer trails, naming cows, returning to cozy evenings with bad wine and good books. And other things… 

Really, it’s not the fresh air he wants, nor even the chance to stretch his disused legs.

It’s the modicum of normalcy dangling just out of reach, just beyond the glass. Because that’s been stripped from here - from this room, the bed. Tainted and scarred by _so_ much. But out there? It hasn’t been touched. Ravaged, certainly; marks of the Lonely abound, and the Slaughter seems to have done its number, if the lack of livestock is any indication. There were also considerably less eyes last they’d been here but… 

“Okay,” Martin murmurs, and Jon senses an ultimatum forming at the end of that sentence, but it never comes, and that’s even better. Sometimes, these things need not be said.

Sometimes, he’s not the only unwitting empath in the room.

“Okay,” he says back. 

Together, they turn away from the window, in pursuit of the real thing. 

In the far east, where the sky is dimmest, where it is not seen, an eye closes and does not reopen.

-

Really, he’d thought the dam had broken a long, _long_ time ago, the ocean already poured from his person in great swaths of divinity, his god long since dried up inside and spat out to the world. As it is, as he takes that first step onto frigid grass in the frigid air, a second, flimsier dam reveals itself, and Jon feels as if he’s been cleaved in two.

Martin is immediately upon him.

“ _What’swrongisitMagnusissomethingcomingareyouhurt_?”

No. No no _no_ . None of that. And all of it, but not in the way Martin thinks, not even in the way _he_ thinks, because he hasn’t… thought about this. 

About how much he’s going to miss all of this. 

The bite of wind and sharp dew, the smell of heather and earth. The weight of a hand in his as he’s guided around the various traps set in haste by Basira. He almost laughs at their shoddiness. And almost cries as he thinks of this place before everything. When it was just him and Martin and the obscurity of nature, the promise of freedom, of growth. Together.

And they can do this together, too. Yes. Of course. They can maneuver the end, the Watcher, as they already have. 

But…

No, it doesn’t matter. Not right now. Not as the gloaming encroaches and he leads Martin quietly away from the cabin and its looming gloom. Not as their trouser legs soak through, and Martin makes a fumbling aside about carrying Jon, to save his strength. 

And especially not as… _nothing_ happens. No horrible monster springing out to devour them. No _burn_ and _grin_ from Magnus. No discussion of Daisy, of Basira.

It’s just… them, stealing out to the top of a nearby hill like young lovers, under a watchful sky gone quiet in a way they do not think too deeply about. Not yet, anyway. Not for the rest of the night.

They’re allowed a little mindless indulgence. They’re allowed to hold each other and think only of their closeness as they search the heavens for stars that have not been seen for months and months and months. 

They’re still not there.

But that’s okay.

More than okay. It means there’s still terribleness in this world by which to compare the things Jon so treasures. 

It means there’s still time to treasure them even more, that _it all_ is still hanging on.

And it means Jon can doze, stupid with an incongruous daze of bliss wrapping coat-like around his battered body, till he realizes it’s Martin’s arm that’s coiling across his shoulders, pulling him closer.

They’re stood atop the hill closest to the cabin, ever vigilant, but melting into each other all the same. It should feel wrong in the midst of all this awfulness, and part of Jon embraces guilt like an old friend, thinking of Daisy and what she must be dealing with right now. 

He does not think of Magnus. _That_ is silent as a grave, and he will lie in the coddling earth till sunrise. _This_ earth, to be exact. The hilltop. The non-stars. Martin. Martin’s arm. Martin’s… God, _Christ_ , Martin’s lovely face, dressed down in a tentative calm Jon hasn’t seen in weeks.

“Staring,” he accuses quietly, and strokes Jon’s cheek.

Then his eyes snap open, and Jon’s pulse snaps to attention as he’s stared _back_ at.

“ _Shit_ ,” Martin whispers, and the hand that touches his cheek moves to skirt the swollen circumference of _his_ eye.

Which is when Jon realizes he’s touching bare skin. _Oh_.

“I just… left the bandages,” Martin stammers, a bit obvious, but it feels necessary to say it aloud, to confirm it.

“It’s fine,” Jon says before he can parse any truth to his words. Because impulse feels _good_ right now, an indecision made by him and him alone and with and _for_ the one person who will never hurt him. 

And who should not have to worry over him like this, who should not condemn his sanity to a creature as loathsome as Jon knows himself to be. But… but he never can know that, fully, with Martin. With the attention Martin lavishes. With all the excuses he makes, the reasons he believes so wholeheartedly.

“Jon,” he’s saying, like it’s the most important truth of all, his name. 

Jon burns. All over. Suddenly so very _alive_ under duress of his love’s gaze, and it’s so much, so _much_ , that he can’t - he simply _can’t_ , so instead he takes Martin’s hand and presses his face to it. Gently, trembling, feels the rough-smooth composition of scars and skin and callus and bone against _his_ eye. Covers it like he can hide it all away with Martin’s help. And he knows Martin would help. He _knows_.

“ _Jon_.”

Said rougher, now, with implications that run Jon’s pulse molten in his stomach, at the back of his neck, all the way to the soles of his feet. Slowly, he emerges from the safety of Martin’s hand to the certainty of his gaze and the low-lidded expression he finds there, his worry lines momentarily usurped by a heady fondness Jon knows well. Very well. _Intimately_ well.

Ah… it… has been rather long, hasn’t it? The night before… well, before he did all _this_ , wasn’t it.

He does not follow that train of thought. 

Well, he does, but to a vastly different conclusion, one of remembered sighs and touches and his-back-arched-near-to-breaking, as Martin is wont to encourage, talented fiend that he is. 

Decidedly, this rush of heat makes no feasible sense. Not with _everything_ . But they’ve never been a perfect pair, have they, never engaged in such quotidian pastimes as _normalcy_. Or, well-timed-affection… as it were.

At the very least, Jon has enough sense left about him to lick his lips (suddenly very dry) and say “ _Martin_ ,” which proves to be both the exact right and exact wrong thing to say, especially how he says it, a rough-shod groan of syllables that makes them both shudder.

Martin moves in first. Always, _always_ , a comfort Jon has sighed for many a time. When everything else is gone to hell and back, Martin is always there to strategize them to safer shores.

With this, he employs only the most delicate finesse, as keenly aware of their situation as Jon is, yet just as similarly helpless. They are only human after all.

Well…

  
Not important. Not _as_ important as Martin, bathed in low light, guiding their faces together and taking Jon’s bottom lip between his, settling his mouth there like new snow, beautiful and exhilarating. 

_Oh_ says Jon somewhere divorced of himself, as his world collapses into a bright and hot singularity of _here_. Just here, as they move in, and then down, Martin guiding Jon to the ground, till they’re knelt on the earth, knees dampening through from dew, the biting cold a wondrous juxtaposition to the heat of Martin’s mouth as he angles clockwise the way Jon has learned drives him a bit desperate. 

It’s about here that Jon occasionally forgets to reciprocate, so he gathers his bearings and ventures a nip at the corner of Martin’s mouth, then a small flick of tongue to soothe the imagined wound.

Martin groans, deep in the back of his throat, and the hands that had previously been resting on Jon’s shoulders wrap suddenly tight and firm around his body, one a web of fingers at the small of his back, the other a gripping vice around Jon’s jaw, holding him steady as Martin works his tongue between Jon’s teeth.

“ _A-are we -”_ Jon eventually manages.

“ _Yes_ , _Christ yes.”_

Which… fuck. Usually Martin is so careful about checking in with him, assessing boundaries and the like. This is not that at all. This is Martin taking control of him in a way he is _more_ than fine with - _delighted_ with, his whole being surging with the pace Martin sets. 

“ _Should we -_ ”

“ _No_.”

And the last vestiges of Jon’s nerves, the ones clinging to we-are-outside-in-the-middle-of-the-apocalypse-this-is-probably-not-the-best-place-to-make-love dissolve in a puff of vapor, clinging and encompassing and _safe_.

Till he pulls back for a breath from Martin’s insistent mouth, peeks open his eye, and sees this safeness made very much manifest around them, as if cloudcover has slunk down to meet them. But there are no riddling eyes. And there is no stifling loneliness. 

“Oh…” 

Martin’s looking now, too. 

“I -”

“Don’t think about it,” Jon orders, his voice low, thick with want, with _command_. 

Because if either of them does so, this will shatter and the irreparable world will come careening back around them. And he can’t do that. Just for now. Just for a while. Just for _them_.

And, just to be sure, he grabs Martin close again, takes the shocked “o” of his mouth and fills it with gasps just bordering on moans, as much actual intent as they are innate responses to the way Martin melts so easily into the embrace, reasserting his vastly superior skillset. 

And… 

_I love you_.

Said as Martin hurriedly divests his jacket and spreads it atop the grass, a gesture of infinite grace that makes Jon’s soul flutter.

_I love you_.

Sighed as Jon goes soft in Martin’s grasp, allows himself to be held, contained, and guided backwards, prone and pliant, submitting so eagerly, so _wantingly_ to another’s will.

_I love you_.

Moaned and gasped and bitten-off-in-ecstasy as Martin takes him apart at the seams, tongue and teeth and fingers and warm breath and warmer eyes, staring up at Jon as he teeters on the edge, this balancing act of absolute exposure and unfettered bliss.

“I love you.”

Again and again, as Martin holds him, soothes the trembling from his wiry frame only to unspool him all over again. Till Jon has to beg - as much as he can with what little voice he has left - and Martin breathes one more time between his legs, but relents. 

“You are… too much… sometimes,” Jon pants as Martin nuzzles his way up his splayed out body, grinning as Jon pulls him into an _extremely_ unchaste kiss.

The mist around them is starting to settle, the world slinking back in, as if it’s ashamed of itself. And it should be, intruding on them like this. But, just as well, it’s perhaps not the best thing to be caught with your trousers down in the midst of the apocalypse, the reality of which is starting to properly sink into Jon’s swirling head. 

Martin helps him to dress quickly - night is fast approaching - but all the while he wears this serene look of contentment and… something else, something even Jon can’t stare into long enough to suss it out.

“Jon?”

This: murmured as Jon fusses with the buttons of Martin’s jacket, doing them back up despite the dampness that permeates it. He _won’t_ have Martin catching cold on his account.

Still, he looks up.

_Staring_ , accuses his inner dialogue, as he meets Martin’s gaze, but he can’t say it aloud. Because Martin’s touching his face again, soothing his palm over Jon’s cheekbone, up, offering his hand like a cup to spill over with every awful thing Jon feels himself beholden to. Alone. Save he’s not. And Martin is there to give to. To give _in_ to. 

“I have an idea,” he says quietly, as Jon remits his woes to the gentle embrace of a hand that will never hurt him.

“But… later.”

Jon nods, eyes still closed, marvelling in the reality that is just Martin.

“Okay.”

Because it is. Maybe not forever - _definitely_ not, actually - but it is right now.

So he uncloses his eye, savors the pressure of Martin’s thumb wiping wetness from beneath _his_ eye, and then Jon takes that hand in his, and follows where he is led, back to the house. 

In his chest, curled up and fragile, fetal and unborn, a tentative hope takes its first and only breath.

_______________________________________________

Daisy is gone.

Not that evening, not as Jon and Martin sneak back into the safehouse, resolutely ignoring the sounds of barely muffled, mostly wet conversation coming from the downstairs bedroom.

Not even in the middle of the night, because Basira wakes with a scream round her throat till Daisy’s mouth replaces it and soothes her again, brings her back to a pleasant delirium where she forgets the things that have transpired mere hours earlier.

And then the morning breaks, its dawn a crippled thing of grey-washed light and filigree mist whorls on the window panes. And Basira crawls from her nightmares to find the bed empty beside her, the thrumming presence of Daisy utterly gone. The house, devoid of her, completely.

-

_I won’t let you._

_It’s not your decision._

_You’re not a monster!_

_I am. But I’m not going to die one._

_You aren’t going to die!_

_Yes, I am._

**_No._ **

_Yes._

-

She hadn’t capitulated. Not an inch, not a single drop of blood in favor of Daisy’s self-castigation. Sod the protocol of their relationship, the _for-each-other-till-it’s-for-ourselves_ mutuality they founded it upon. Because Basira doesn’t see her like that anymore, hasn’t seen her like that since they were able to put a name to the thing that drove Daisy to such cruelties, and suddenly Basira had a reason not just to cast _away_ blame, but to cast it upon something neither of them had any control over. Ever 

It is not - Daisy’s - _fault_ . She is not going to _die_ for it.

But now she’s gone, and the chasm carving itself into Basira’s chest flays her heart wide open, building a wounded growl that starts low in her stomach till it’s spilling out of her mouth like carnage.

“ _She’s gone_.”

Martin has emerged from… somewhere - (not important, too hard to concentrate) - Jon in dutiful tow behind him, and she’s cornered them both at the foot of the stairs, holding something she knows probably counts as a weapon, but she doesn’t know exactly what, so it’s - not - _important_.

What matters is she doesn’t _know_.

Where Daisy is. Where she could have gone. What she might _do_.

“Basira,” Martin struggles not to put his palms up at her. Good. She appreciates that. Holding his fucking ground for once; she _respects_ that.

“ _We have to find her_.”

“Yes, Christ yes, of course, just, can you - just -”

“Basira.”

Jon.

He’s looking at her. That _eye_ is un-bandaged but still swollen shut, bruises like a Rorschach blooming beneath it, a purpling crescent moon of her greatest triumph. _Fuck_ that felt good, striking that son of a bitch where she’d never managed to make it count before.

Till she… realizes she doesn’t actually know who she means. Jon or Magnus.

It’s this that makes her stagger, the momentum of her fury tripping over suddenly broken legs, and the thing in her hand clatters to the floor.

“Shit!” Martin jumps but still catches himself faster than she.

Oh… the gun. 

She sees it now as Martin gingerly drags it toward himself with his sock foot.

“Shit,” she echoes. Blinks. Long and slow, the world around her lagging to a pulse point of disbelief.

_Shit_.

It’s Jon who catches her, steadies her, walks her over to the kitchen table, sits her down. And she lets him. Lets herself subside to him despite all that he has done to her, to Daisy, because she just drew a fucking _gun_ on the only people left in the world who know what she’s going through. Who can _help_.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and finds her voice unusually labored, ragged and helpless.

_Christ_ , she hates crying, but none of it can be helped. Not her. Not Daisy. Not the steady flow of stinging heat that burns its way down her cheeks, charting a course for her scooped-out heart, bathing the blood there in coppery anguish.

“We’ll find her,” Jon says.

He’s kneeling in front of her, and how he manages to display such sorrow with half of his face torn up like a watercolor study… 

She reaches for him, and he flinches. Not away. Just there, in the meager bubble of the world he’s claimed as his. A necessary reflex, a tic he’s earned from the life that’s dragged him in chains to such a sorry state. Yet still, he lets her touch him, lets her feel how swollen shut _his_ eye is, lets her press just shy of too hard around the bruising. To reassure herself. To know that it’s just Jon reaching out, offering an anchor.

“Help me,” she says, when she’s had her fill of inflicting and finds herself so unsatisfied. 

And it’s only Jon who’s looking back at her. It’s just him.

And he says, “Always.”

And she knows he is not lying.

-

His heart’s still in his throat, but Martin manages to be the one to speak sense - when he finds his voice, that is. And when he succeeds in peeling himself away from the banister he’s still standing tiptoe-plastered against.

“When did you see her last,” he croaks, keeping his foot mounted atop the gun, both because he’s terrified Basira might go for it again, and also because he’s terrified he might set it off, though that’s not very logical.

But he’s entitled to some _il_ logic, he thinks. Yes. Thank you very much.

“Last night,” Basira says quietly, still staring down at Jon, and something feels terribly familiar about her response. They’ve done this before. And look how that turned out.

But Daisy’s smart - Daisy’s no _fool_ . Fool _hardy_ , certainly, but she doesn’t exactly have an equivalent Jonah Magnus to whom she can prostrate herself. Her’s is purely an internal war.

Actually, Martin’s not sure if that’s better.

He shakes his head; they don’t have time to get bogged down in the details. This is immediate in a way that even Jon’s little… stunt wasn’t. Because they have absolutely, unequivocally, no leads. That Basira’s not offered any up yet tells him all he needs to know. That being: they don’t, and they’re pretty well fucked.

He… ventures a step. Another. Bends swiftly to snag the gun, clutching it by the magazine and biting back bile at the sensation of such a cold and alien weight in his hands. He supposes that’s par for the course, though, when you’ve just spent the better part of eight hours tenderly kissing and stroking and murmuring-into-the-hair-of your lover.

God that was… nice, wasn’t it? A suspension of bliss. Even back in the bedroom with its walls and windows and floorboards riddled with recriminations, they’d been able to doze together, thinking of nothing, and holding each other so terribly close. 

And now none of that matters. It might as well have never happened, what for the way Jon’s succumbed to his knees again, penance for that which will never be his fault. But he’s already convinced himself, so it might as well be. And all Martin can do is fall in step beside him and hope to keep him from tumbling over the cliff’s edge of his own self-enmity. 

Eventually, Martin reaches them and takes a knee beside Jon. Basira’s staring into her lap, face stained wet and flushed; an errant few strands of curly, jet hair peeking out from beneath her hijab. Martin holds no particular affection for her - tentative friendship, at best - but the sight of such minimal disarray makes his core run cold. Who is Basira without Daisy? Who are they all without each other?

He has to be a voice of reason in this, though, so he swallows down his ire and gives himself over to sympathy. 

“Tell us what you know.”

-

As expected, it’s frustratingly little. Basira won’t divulge the details of their conversation in full, which is understandable. That’s private. That’s _theirs_ . What she does offer is a stoic sort of… play by play. Much revolved around Daisy talking her down from threats of Magnus’s eye - apparently that punch was quite satisfying - which led to hours of Basira telling, demanding, _pleading_ with Daisy to… some avail. At least Basira had thought so, had _hoped_. 

When she finally pauses for a breath, Jon endeavors to untangle her hands from themselves, soothes them in the cradle of his own.

“Basira,” he says, in a tone that immediately sets the air around them on a razor’s edge.

Martin, now leaning against the table - mostly with his head in his hands, occasionally staring shell-shocked as Basira shared what she could - bristles like a cat, opens his mouth to protest, but Jon is faster. More determined.

And angry.

“Basira,” he repeats, and that unmistakable thread of gossamer static laces round his tongue, transfixing Basira. 

Each syllable, he wields like a rapier. His intonation could blister bone.

“Why do you want her to live?”

It’s not the question any of them expected, least of all Jon, and Basira’s eyes go wide, so very _wide_. 

“Because she deserves to,” she answers too quickly, twin tracks of tears dripping into the corners of her slack mouth.

Jon’s footing is as sure as his conscience cannot be, and he continues, steadily, “And why do you want her to die.”

“I d-don’t w-”

“ _Why_.”

_Don’t make me_ , plead her eyes, beg her tears, thrashes and kicks her tongue as teeth fail to cage it and she shudders her answer, the truth she never wanted, whole and wholly _wrong_. But it’s not. Not if it’s them. Not if it’s Daisy.

_Because I can’t keep her, I can’t tame her, and I can’t have her. I can’t see her wither and suffer because of my heart. I can’t live without her. And I can’t let her live like this._

_Because I love her._

_I love her I love her_.

Jon does not let go of Basira’s hands as she brooks the plummeting depths of her soul made bare. Nor does he look away when her eyes become her own again, and she sees him _back_. 

He is not swayed as Martin makes faraway sounds of mild panic and certain fear, nor does he waver as something _deep_ inside stirs with a laborious smile. 

He does, however, shake, his body wracked with tremors as he straightens, leans up, and presses his forehead to Basira’s. Closes his eye. Sees the _nothing_ between them, and feels the _everything_ that they are to each other as Basira’s fingers dig into his knuckles. 

Bone ash white. The color erupts softly between them, a pressure point of _so_ much. The light at the end. The wellspring of an iris. The things laid bare in the hopes of retribution. 

_Help her._

_I will._

And her, and him, and maybe even him _self_ in the process. Because in theory, it’s so simple. So _achievable_. He just needs to start somewhere. He just needs to follow the trail.

_______________________________________________

_enough enough enough enough enoughenughenoughnough enoenougnoughenounotenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenoughenougheughehenougo̶u҉gh̸nougnoughhe̡n̴͞oųn͘o͠t̶͝e͝n̨o̶u҉gh̸eno͢u͞g̢h͞e͏n͜oư̶͠g̛h̷̴e̡͞n̢o̵u̢̨gh͟͞ȩ͞͝n̷̴o̶u҉̶g̢҉h̷̨en̶̸ou͡g̛͠he̢̕n̷͠o̸u̕͝gh̷͘͜e̛͝n͠oų̨g̨h̕͞e͘҉̵n͡o̴ugh͘e͏҉nơu͝g̶͜͢he҉n̴͞o̴̷u҉͠g҉heųg͞͡hehen̕o͘u͡g͏h͟͞e͜no̴̡u̸̢g̷͜n͡ǫ̶u̷gno̡u̸̢g͏̴̸ho̶u҉gh̸h͘e͏҉nơu͝g̶͜͢he҉n̴͞o̴̷u҉͠g҉heųg͞͡hehen̕o͘u͡g͏h͟͞e͜no̴̡u̸̢g̷͜n͡ǫ̶u̷gno̡u̸̢g͏̴̸ho̶u҉gh̸e̓̽ͥͫ̆͐̚n̢̉_

_e̓̽ͥͫ̆͐̚n̢̉o̴͛̅͞_

_Not_

_Never_

Never enough. And too much. And none at _all_.

And she can’t not slaver over the pursuit, rife and ripe on her tongue, scoring her breaths _hot_ as she pants and heaves and _finds_.

She can show Basira how _good_ it is, how it will be, what peace will finally look like. How it will sound touch smell see _taste_ . She just has to find _it_. Just one. That’s all she needs. For Basira to know. 

And for Jon to do.

One more time, until it’s her turn, and the waiting and the watch and the _want_ will finally, finally be over.

And at last, she will not sing praise.

And it will be enough.

It _will_ be.

It has to.

_______________________________________________

“So that’s it, then.”

Martin doesn’t mean to sound so bitter, really he doesn’t. He was aiming more for “scathing disbelief” but there’s slightly too much “scorned jealousy” as if Jon compelling Basira equates, somehow, to infidelity. 

Regardless of intent, it just comes out all wrong, and Jon peels himself away from Basira, turns to him, and even _that_ eye looks betrayed. 

That hurts. Because he doesn’t mean it _for_ Jon. Not at all. _Never_. 

No, he’s pissed off at Basira, for indulging such careless stupidity around Daisy, for forcing Jon’s hand - his compulsion - instead of being bloody _transparent_ for once. Since the beginning of this end, she’s approached everything with such infuriating pragmatism when, sometimes, the end of the world calls for a little more _spontaneity_. 

Seems Daisy was the better part of her half in that regard, and he almost wants to say as much, just to see what it would do to Basira, but what the hell does that achieve in the grand scheme of this?

They have to focus on finding Daisy. And, lucky for everyone, he’s already decided on a course of action.

“We should check the village,” he says, like he can clear the air of his petulance with the snap of his fingers. Well, words, anyway.

“Where else would she go?” He presses, when neither Jon nor Basira respond. 

“Obviously, she’s planned something. She’s not just some… mindless animal, much as you like to think.”

Okay. That was unnecessary. But… goddamn, if the way Basira recoils, like she’s been struck, isn’t satisfying. It strikes something in Martin, too, an awful tug of war between his empathy and his ire. The latter holds an upper hand, though, as he offers his own to Jon, still knelt in front of Basira.

“Not to be an asshole,” he still tries to justify, “but unless you have any other ideas -”

“No,” Basira looks at him properly, her face schooled to its calmest shade of rage. “No, I don’t. _Thank you_ , Martin.”

Jon still hasn’t taken Martin’s hand, nor his eyes from Basira, but he does at this. Does both things, and the pressure of his clammy palm and the weight of his gaze upon Martin makes him shudder, bodily.

“Good,” he squeezes Jon’s hand and all but hauls him to his feet.

Then, “Well, best get on.”

Basira doesn’t reply, and Martin refuses to look at her any further. Or at Jon. So he settles on the last thing available, wracking his brain for the next course of action.

And there it sits, the gun, displayed innocuously atop the table, a nothing item without fear and anger to supplement it. Still, the sheer density of its sleek blackness seems to eat into the wood grain. Martin stalls, wavers a second, then makes his decision.

Sharply, he turns on his heel, with Jon in tow, heading back for their bedroom to start preparing. All the while, he feels the heft of the gun’s muzzle on his back. But he doesn’t turn around, doesn’t falter. Because, despite it all, he still trusts Basira. And until she puts the bullet between his eyes, he will help her.

-

There’s so little fanfare, and that bothers Jon the most, recalls him too easily to the days at the Institute, when worm attacks and scalpel wounds book-ended budget constraints. The gravity of _this_ , of confronting Basira, of Daisy missing, there’s a terrible gravity to it that just isn’t being addressed properly. Though perhaps that’s more Jon’s nihilistic streak getting ahead of itself. Perhaps he should be glad this hasn’t torn them all asunder and cast them into uncertain despair. Martin’s vitriol and a nigh catatonic Basira are far more tenable than yet another interpersonal crisis. Or… at least they’re all functioning and not… punching each other in the eye.

A little less than absentmindedly, he rubs at _that_ , careful not to agitate the bruising, but however Basira subdued Magnus, it hasn’t taken complete root, and it still feels like there’s a grain of sand scratching by his tear duct. The lid is swollen firmly shut, though, so he doesn’t have to look at it in the bathroom mirror as he debates a good splash of freezing water. And neither does Martin have to see it. And that’s fine. That’s good. And he _really_ doesn’t want to bring up the matter of bandages, because Martin is decidedly simmering, like a kettle about to scream, and the last thing Jon wants to provoke is anymore attention for his woes.

It’s _fine_. 

This is all just fucking _grand_.

But the silence between them - as Jon shuffles back into the room - is fast encroaching, dense and oppressive, and Jon almost wants to crack a joke that they’d better watch out lest they attract some underling of the Buried. He even gets so far as opening his mouth, but it snaps swiftly shut again when suddenly Martin rounds on him, pulls him close, and smothers him in a crushing embrace.

_Don’t do this_.

Jon hears him. How could he not? Each word drives into his skull with such precise sadness, such distinct desperation, he’d have a better chance of pulling nails from stone with his bare teeth.

_Please don’t ever do this_.

Three guesses as to what _this_ is. The pleas fall on deaf ears, anyway. Jon would never. _Ever_. Hell, his track record thus far pretty well proves he’s in this for the long haul, as long as he can sustain Magnus, as long as it takes to… 

But Martin can’t read him back, of course, so he just keeps clinging around Jon, like the lovely fog that obscured them earlier, like the warmth they’d shared, curled up in bed together before everything went all the way back to hell.

So he says, “Never,” and seals it with a kiss to Martin’s quivering mouth, then another to his furrowed brow, then more and more and more until something breaks, and Martin dares give a tentative laugh. It’s small and no more than a puff of air, but it’s beautiful and perfect, and Jon’s heart takes a measured leap.

“Let’s pack,” he says, a quiet suggestion and easily dismissed.

“Okay,” whispers Martin, even flimsier.

Jon nods and decidedly does not comment on the frost creeping up the window panes behind Martin. He does, however, lean in again, and press a softer, sadder kiss to the corner of Martin’s mouth, and then the back of his hands as Jon lifts them from their drooping fate in his pockets.

The anticlimax is unbearable, but Jon weathers it for Martin and waits for him to find his own way back to the present. 

Which is about the same time Jon realizes he doesn’t even know what they’d managed to salvage from the camp before escaping. Details have been so vague, so muddled over in favor of Magnus, in favor of _himself_ , he barely even knows how they got to Scotland at all. Daisy… carried him, allegedly, but, Christ, what a harrowing endeavor. And he endured none of it.

More immediate, though, is the concern of supplies. If Daisy’s gone properly feral, they’ll need restraints, cuffs or rope. Jon will _not_ talk her down from herself. There’s no telling how Magnus could manipulate that effort, and even three of them versus One, Bloodied are hardly favorable odds.

He recalls the traps set up outside, but they were only makeshift tripwires. There’s the gun… 

“Jon.”

Ah, he’d gone off in his own little world; he resurfaces, and Martin’s watching him. Not staring or scrutinizing, just… looking.

“Yes?” Jon says, more rasp than word. It’s always so… revealing, to be the subject of Martin’s meadow-green eyes, like he might just lay down in them and subsume into their earthy brilliance.

But Martin says nothing further, just keeps looking and looking, eyes flitting over Jon’s face, cataloging each detail. Were it anyone else, Jon would suspect more than ill intent, but it’s just Martin, just him seeing. Jon wants to know _what_ he sees, of course, but he also refuses to ask. It’s part of the comfort of submitting himself and asking nothing in return. 

“When we get back,” Martin says, with such finality it makes Jon sag with relief, “we should - I have something to ask you. Okay?”

Jon’s nerves take a faithless leap - anxious little bastards - but he swallows, nods. Because it’s Martin, so any ambiguity is okay - is _great_ . It’s so fucking _good_ to not know everything. 

“Okay,” he says, and an unseen weight visibly lifts from Martin’s shoulders. 

“Let’s…” he dithers, does that charming little two-step to and fro before deciding on a course of direction.

That being, the bed, where he crouches down and pulls out their shared duffel, the one they’d packed ages ago at the camp.

“C’mere,” he says, and bumps his head against Jon’s thigh as he stations himself beside Martin.

“Sit.”

Jon does, creakily settling himself on the edge of the bed.

“Best get this sorted ‘fore we go,” Martin says, procuring another sizable length of gauze, a wad of cotton, and a single pack of antiseptic wipes - a precious, precious commodity that should _not_ be wasted on this. 

“How… much is left?”

Because, much as he is loath to admit it, Jon rather likes not having to wear the bandages, with the pressure and scrape of the fabric a constant reminder of what he’s done. Sure, his skewed depth perception is taking some getting used to, and there is still the risk of infection, something he’s very thoroughly avoided thinking about. Mental impairments aside, there still remains the fact he has another man’s two hundred year old eye lodged inside his head.

Well… yeah, okay, maybe the bandages are best, then.

“We have enough,” Martin is saying as Jon returns again from his own little worry-world.

Which strikes him as impossible, unless there’s something Martin’s not telling him about eye-transplant-care. Or he’s just being optimistic. Might also be that. 

“You know best,” he jokes, and enjoys another one of Martin’s careful (not-quite-a) laughs.

And then he _very_ much enjoys the boundless care Martin implements as he kneels between Jon’s legs and dresses Magnus’s eye. Jon had been unconscious the first few times this had been done, and the others were less than ideal conditions necessitating haste more than ministration. But now, Jon relaxes into the tenderness of Martin’s hands fussing carefully, only wincing when he daubs the cold antiseptic wipe over his sealed shut eyelids.

“Hold this?” Martin guides a square puff of cotton into Jon’s palm, and waits for him to raise it to his eye. Which he does, obediently and with aching reverence for each of Martin’s cautious actions.

“Thank you,” Martin murmurs, and brushes aside Jon’s hair to best suit the angle of the gauze.

Till, finally, “There,” with a sigh of equal parts satisfaction and foreboding. Jon ignores the latter and musters up a smile for the former, a wan thing that Martin returns with mirrored exhaustion.

“Thank you,” Jon echoes, and pulls Martin close, lets him bury his face in his chest, head fitting perfectly beneath Jon’s chin. His heart thrums with the sigh Martin breathes against his sternum. Release and ache, all in one.

And there’s so much still to do, so many horrible things to contend with, to fear. But that is not this moment. Here and now, the window panes have cleared of their frost, and time is something to let transpire in the midst of a gentle preface. Terrible things can come later. 

And it really is a miracle how well Martin has dressed Jon’s wounds. Perfect, in fact, the pressure immaculate and encouraging a steady heartbeat Jon can convince himself is just his own, just his body responding to trauma and to decently applied care. 

Because it’s easier - much _kinder_ \- not to believe the single, spidering tendril of heat that pushes up from the depths of his blindness, searching out that which Jon will never let it have. 

He’s stronger than it. Smarter. Has so much more to die for, and so many ways left to live.

No. Not that. Not _him_ . And especially not _now_. And, if he can help it, never, ever again.

-

Basira is waiting for them where they’d left her, has hardly moved an inch, and Martin half wonders if she’s prepared at all. Save there’s Daisy’s rucksack sitting at her feet, and the gun is nowhere to be seen, so… that answers that.

She remains sat, even as they group back round the table and then promptly disband as it becomes apparent she is not going to talk. Martin, wanting to put a particular distance between them, sets about gathering their more transportable foodstuffs. The village is hardly far, but knowing their luck, they’ll be horrifically waylaid somehow, and with Basira indisposed, he’s next in line for “most pragmatic” so: granola, jerky, and two thermoses of tap it is.

Really, he’s beyond grateful for the veritable treasure trove of supplies the cabin sustained. When they’d arrived - beaten, bruised, depleted, and hopeless - he’d anticipated a gutted building at best. To find it not only standing intact, but stocked full as they’d left it and with enough petrol for the generator to relish the luxury of indoor bathroom facilities, well, next to Jon waking up, it was the single greatest moment of Martin’s life.

“Right,” he says, to break the silence, because Basira still hasn’t deigned to, and he expects nothing of Jon. That’s not his burden to bear. 

He turns, then, to find Jon perched on the table, hands in his lap, head down and staring at them. Basira still hasn’t budged an inch. Neither of them look ready to tackle the mission ahead, and, realistically, neither is Martin, but what choice do they have? 

“We should eat something,” he says, which in itself is very much a present concern. 

Jon hardly subsists on anything tangible anymore, but he still needs the occasional pick-me-up beyond, of course, the nearest Avatar. As for himself, Martin hasn’t eaten anything since Jon woke up, subsisting purely on a cocktail of anxiety, euphoria, crushing despair, and mania. Which is pretty useful sometimes. But now his stomach’s gnawing a hole through itself, and he shamelessly digs into one of the packets of jerky, offering some to Jon, and debating just how many boundaries it might cross to toss something into Basira’s lap.

He’s… pent up, he realizes, and it’s provoking some rather _bitchy_ responses to all of this, but it’s better, he supposes, than another screaming match and waving guns. But there’s no tactful way to circumvent this, no bloody _nuance_. Every effort up until now has hinged upon the whims of the the most violently esoteric impossibilities to ever cross the threshold of nightmare into reality, yet… here they are, quibbling over baseless conflicts and giving each other the silent treatment.

It’d be laughable, were it not so immediate a hurdle to their actually getting a damn move on.

So Martin does what he does best, and concedes. Not kindly. Not even genially - a skill he’s taken up in these ends of times. Empathy and sympathy are two vastly different wheelhouses, and he’s spent a decent chunk of time fine tuning the latter, acclimating himself to the impossible concept of “not prostrating himself to the needs of everyone else.” Save… Jon, of course, but even they have a decent argument here and there.

Which is why Martin’s able to swallow his anger long enough to approach Basira, and hold out a hand in truce.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Basira takes a good long stare at his hand, but Martin doesn’t waver, doesn’t back down. He doesn’t mean it, entirely, not _fully_ right now, but it’s enough to mean something true, to steady their cooperation long enough to find Daisy and reconcile their wounds. And to whatever end they arrive at, then Martin will decide if he’s truly in the mood to forgive. 

And then Basira takes his hand, looks him firm in the eye.

“Me too,” she says, mouth aquiver around something suppressed, the weight of unsaid things lingering in her tone.

It catches Martin a bit off guard, and he just sort of stammers out, “Are you ready?”

To which Basira replies with a wryly snappish, “No.”

And Martin allows a thin smile at that.

“Good,” he says, finding footing on their uncommon ground. “Me neither.”

Beside him, Jon suddenly exhales a held breath, one Martin hadn’t even heard him intake. It’s startling, decisive, and cleaves the moment in two, leaving the uncertainty and fury of Basira’s blame to languish in the past tense, while the future looms on unsteady limbs, malformed and grotesque; enticingly mysterious.

And everything just further convolutes itself as Basira turns to Jon and says, “Are you okay?” 

Jon has no response to that, his expression dancing through several iterations of confusion, hope, suspicion, resignation, and back all over again, till eventually he settles on “wary acceptance” and nods.

“No,” he also says, “but it’s okay.”

“Yeah,” and Basira looks like she’s going to reach over and give him her hand, the same as she allowed with Martin, but she doesn’t. That’s a line not yet drawn, let alone one to cross. It’s going to take time but… this is progress, at least.

Martin’s chest seizes with the sight of it, the prospect of reconciliation, loathe as he is to turn belly up anymore. But this isn’t about him, not really. And that means he must be the beacon to guide everyone through the uneven tides, steady them to shore, ensure their safety.

It’s only at the tail end of this thought he realizes he’s thinking only of Jon, that - try as he might - he has never and will never hold Basira and Daisy quite in that regard. 

Which is also fine.

That’s just not how they work. He’ll still risk his neck to save them both, and they’ll do the same, sure, but there’s no real gravity to it. Because he has his anchor, already. And so does Basira. And hers is not Jon. And Martin’s is not Daisy. And what a damn, beautiful thing to be so uniquely polarized when all the world seems a singular muddle of fear and loathing. Their own conflicts - so minuscule and pathetic in the grander scheme of the Watcher - they are _fantastic_ . And _theirs_ . And there are ways to solve them. And ways not to. And what a gift, what a _defiance_ that they get to relish in figuring it all the fuck out together.

Which, right now, means swallowing their pride, their distrust, their terror, and seeking out the goal of Daisy. And whatever goals lay after that. 

Martin can think of one. Can see it right in front of him, a silhouette behind the face of his love. But that face is too brilliant and lovely and pushes those thoughts aside too easily, makes him think, instead, of how grateful he is Jon has never denied him the raw and unbearable truth. He could have run, he could have hid away, believing himself to be such a monster. But he didn’t, and it cries volumes of the trust and self worth Jon’s taken, gradual bit by bit, into himself. It means there’s been progress, and that there’s hope for more. 

And all of them

And this.

And a balm of determination washes through the room, bathing them in a glow of quiescent victory.

“Right.”

Basira.

“Mmh.”

Martin.

And Jon: quiet and contemplative, but still he hefts the duffel across his back with all the calm, collected passion of a bowstring pulling taut, preparing to fire and pierce the bones of whatever they’re about to face.

It’s a good look on him, and recalls Martin to their first weeks in the throes of the apocalypse, when voracious obstinance drove them to survive.

So, as much as Basira should probably head this, they both defer to Jon, letting him lead them to the door, open it, and guide them out into the awakened world, with its daylight anemic and its implications innumerable. 

“Right,” he says.

And it finally feels like things actually are.

_______________________________________________

Basira had always vaguely known about the safehouse, among other haunts at Daisy’s disposal, including a connection in the Faroe Islands of all places. Despite this, she’d never visited any of them. Never had a reason to - thank god - but she wishes she had. Wishes they’d taken a weekend in the damn-near-idyllic cabin she never could have expected. But there it was all the same after weeks of impossible travel, waiting quietly - picturesque, even - in the leering fog, a low blow of domesticity to Basira’s already tortured heartstrings.

The real kicker was, it hadn’t been their first choice of destination. London to Scotland was initially London to anywhere- _but_ -fucking-London. Which became Birmingham and then Leicester with each new hideout proving more vulnerable than the last. And with Daisy’s strength a balancing-act of a thing, with Jon still unconscious and the worst liability of all - with her and Martin constantly at each other’s throats about his _affliction,_ and with them so damn far up north anyway, the cabin became balefire, stoking the last of their resistance, their energy, till they accomplished the impossible and found a… a home, waiting for them.

That’s how Basira sees it. Home. Safe. Tucked away, and not for the sake of the Lonely, though the fog is oppressive on occasion, and she doesn’t fully trust Martin’s bleeding heart.

But no, it was a surety she’d never considered before, and she means to protect it, to bring Daisy back to it. To bring her home. They’re all they have anymore, and she won’t let anymore of their lives be torn apart. Even Martin. Even Jon.

There’s the possibility she’s put far too little thought into any of this. Between Daisy sentencing herself to Jon and now her disappearance, very little of that time has been spent in Basira’s mental favor. She just wants to find Daisy. That’s all that matters. Everything else can come after, and she can weather it if Daisy is by her side.

-

The village, thank god, is less than a mile away, though none of them have been able to scope it out yet. Jon rarely visited when such mundanities as “chips at the local pub” was still an option. Martin frequented the bookshop, the Newsagents, and the single Costa for wifi, but that was about it. He far preferred the time spent in rapt adoration of being-almost-on-holiday with Jon. And, of course, Basira is in entirely new territory. 

Which is fine, because, by the time they’ve trekked to the environs, it’s new territory to all of them. 

Blighted and scarred and tortured territory. 

“Christ.”

Martin and Jon, together.

And from Basira, a stony expression and a faint grimace. But there’s no place in her heart to mourn any other aftermath save hers and Daisy’s. That, and she hardly suspects Daisy held any special attachment to the little hamlet.

Jon and Martin, however… well, she spares them a moment to find their bearings.

For Jon’s part, he holds himself together rather well, considering. There’s a million and one things currently playing tug of war with his composure, but the sight of the town bleached of life and community, the buildings scoured and scored with deep gouges of the Lonely, and even the Vast, somehow this hits him hardest, forming a dull knot on the center of his chest. Making him cold, all over.

And then there’s Martin. Staring and still, tamping down his panic as remnants of the Lonely waft thick and acrid around him, tendrilling out from every shattered window and gaping doorway. It’s trailed after him, these past few weeks, like a kicked stray searching out scraps from his brutally cold shoulder. Because how could he not indulge it? Even just a little. As Jon and Daisy wasted away, as he and Basira failed to acknowledge each other beyond the necessity of survival. How could he not welcome the occasional embrace of something so understanding?

But now Jon’s come back, and Martin knows how to fear again. 

And he _loathes_ the beckoning fingers that pluck at his skin, tracing gooseflesh down his spine, whispering sickly things that once upon a time might have enticed him into a most pleasant melancholy. 

Sod that. _Fuck_ that.

And the fingers he takes between his own are real, solid, warm - are Jon’s in every way that the Lonely is not _anything_ and will never be anything to Martin ever again. It has taken this town hostage, but Martin will not submit the same.

“I have you,” Jon says quietly, just a wisp beneath his breath as he squeezes Martin’s hand.

“I know,” Martin says back.

And, because none of them are monsters in this, he turns to Basira, and once more extends a hand.

She doesn’t take it, but she nods, the rigor in her expression settling, somewhat, like silt in a turbulent riptide.

“Let’s go,” she says, and braves the first step toward the town.

Whatever bated breath holds the town hostage - whatever manifestations the Lonely has taken - it chokes further into itself, as if recoiling, as the three of them wend their way down the main thoroughfare.

It’s a modest affair, just a few terraced houses flanking either side of the busted pavement, the Newsagent’s on the right, the pub to the left. They meander with uncanny ease, the utter _lack_ of any sinister presence both a comfort and a hair raising anxiety. Jon strains to pick out anything from the morass of gloom, but even _his_ eye is silent, tucked away and dormant beneath its bandages, proffering not even a snarky _pulse_ of knowledge or intuition about the fate of this poor town.

Jon does know one thing, though: that this is a place sated by its own wretched solitude; that the Hunt has no claim here. 

And that Daisy is not here.

Because there’s no blood, no _never-enough-not-enough_ . Because he knows what it _feels_ like to slaver so insatiably for the end of the chase, knew it when he took that nameless intruder into his hands and stole their story. 

_Their family: wrenched into the Lonely. Their pursuit: one of bastardized affection. Their demise: alone and tormented, and stolen, too, by a vicious, remorseless monster._

“Jon?”

It’s Martin, and he’s crowding suddenly into Jon’s personal space. Granted, there was little of that between them, anyway, but Jon realizes he’s stopped walking and started shaking, clutching his shoulders as frost settles into his soul.

_His_ eye is frustratingly, _teasingly_ docile, and Jon reaches for that, next, wants to _claw_ an answer from Magnus, but Martin’s hand shoots out and stops him, holds him steady.

“What’s wrong.”

He doesn’t quite ask, which is kind of him, because Jon isn’t sure how he might obligate himself to an answer. He can pick and choose this one, instead, can decide which way to best crush their hopes all over again.

Because Daisy _isn’t_ here.

“I don’t - she’s not -” he manages that in a whisper to Martin (Basira’s paced a few feet ahead of them) and Martin’s brows meet in a deeply troubling look of consternation. 

“She’s not here, Basira.”

“Yeah,” says Basira coolly, almost amused. 

“Yeah?”

“Think about it like this, _Jon_ ,” she says, still not granting the courtesy of looking at him.

“Why else would she leave?”

“I don’t understand,” which, for Jon, is both a horror and a relief, though in this instance the latter doesn’t quite hold its own. This isn’t just about him anymore.

“The hunt,” Basira answers, with a decidedly dressed down inflection that makes Jon know she isn’t talking about the Ceaseless Chaser. “She needs to hunt, Jon. Why the fuck would she come here?”

“Are… you sure about that?” Martin ventures, a bit too sarcastic to pretend it’s anything else, and Basira goes stiff.

“Th’fuck,” she growls, turning slowly, “is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know,” Martin takes a calculated step toward her, one that conveniently positions him in front of Jon, too.

“I think you know there’s every possibility she’s her own damn person and, maybe just this once, she’s not doing this for you _or_ the Hunt.”

“Martin,” Jon hisses, because Martin is arriving at some very strenuous conclusions, ones he doesn’t want to hear as much as Basira cannot. 

Because Daisy is his friend, too, and the possibility that she’s just… disappeared to take matters into her own hands, like a dog who’s heard it’s going to be put down the next morning… 

No. No no _no_ , she wouldn’t _do_ that.

Right? _Right_?

Christ, his head is so _empty_ , and he can’t see any other outcome than: _Daisy is gone. She’s gone, and we’ll never see her again. She’s gone, and it’s all my fault._

Until -

“ _Get down_!”

This, from Martin who grabs him and hauls him over to the nearest building, practically throwing him through its cavernous threshold into the dark, empty foyer beyond. Basira bolts in after them, cursing. Which is when Jon sees the culprit of his despair, what must have wormed its fingers into his soul and played him a hopeless fool.

There, outside, the fog has coalesced with impossible fortitude, so thick and obscuring, he can’t even see across the street.

Not that he needs to. Everything that requires their audience emerges from the fog: listless humanoid figures stumbling in great droves from the _nothing-made-something_ mist, right there where he and Martin and Basira had been stood. 

There’s no malice to the presence of the phantoms, themselves. The haze around them hovers with malevolence, but its prisoners hold no such purpose. In fact, they seem to exude the very opposite, their hunched figures and desperate, futile grasps at each other - as if seeking out a hand to hold - inspire a gut-wrenching pity that makes Jon woozy.

“ _Who are they_?”

Basira.

“ _I - I think they’re -_ ”

Martin.

But Jon cuts in, abruptly overwhelmed with _understanding_.

“ _Look_.”

And they do, as the figures begin to move, limping down the street, in the direction of the town square. Wordless concession passes between all three of them, and they re-emerge from the house. The fog still meanders in the street, but it’s mostly focused on cajoling a few straggling silhouettes onward. They’re smaller, these ones. Childlike.

Another sick _lurch_ roils in Jon’s stomach, and he gropes for Martin’s hand. Finds it. Holds so terribly tight.

“It’s… them,” he says, a needless effort - it’s obvious enough - but he feels they’re owed at least that, these poor victims of such awful circumstances. They deserve to be seen.

Because it _is_ them: the townsfolk who once populated this tucked-away little haven. And now they inhabit the Lonely, taken and twisted, without even each other for comfort. And still they move as one, a great congregation of emptiness, down the street. Down, down, down, and away.

“We have to help them,” Martin croaks, his hand gone clammy in Jon’s. “We can’t just _leave_ them.”

“They’re gone,” says Basira unhelpfully. Not mean, not sarcastic. Just… not… helpful.

Granted, Jon doesn’t know what to say, either. But perhaps Basira is wrong. Maybe there is something they can do. At the very least, they can bear witness to the demise of these poor souls. They can provide that.

He doesn’t explain this - can’t, for fear of what they might think of him. And part of him - a niggling awful maggot of a thing inside his chest - worries that this isn’t his own desire. That Magnus is waking up again, hungry for these countless, damned morsels. But just as well… there is no desire to seek a statement. Jon doesn’t want to _know_ them that way. He doesn’t want to dissect the misery that brought them to such a sorry state. He just wants to be there, a presence for them where they have none for themselves. 

To be observed is simply to _be_ , no matter the dilemma of authenticity. And he can be that anchor for them. 

So he falls in step behind them, Martin doing the same. Basira, too - a miracle of camaraderie Jon will parse later. For now, he wants to see these spectres.

And so he does. As they near the town’s center, the trudging shades become steadily more opaque, their forms gaining bodily poise that distinguishes one from the other, their unity coalescing into a throng of uniquely anguished victims. But still they’re terribly _apart_ , unable to comfort one another as whatever beckoning force urges them on, until they reach their apparent destination.

There, in the heart of the little village, the procession halts, and every eye turns upon the clock tower that sprouts up from a once charming cobbled square, the cracks between each stone slick with slimy weeds gone black and putrid. And so too does the tower stand stooped and infirmed, a looming presence that makes Jon _viscerally_ uncomfortable, makes _his_ eye itch. But only a little. Only enough to allude, but not enough to send him spiraling.

Whether Martin is sharing the same thought, he doesn’t voice anything aloud, but he does grip Jon’s hand harder. And harder, still, as Basira takes a foolhardy step closer.

They’re hardly in hiding, but they’re a relatively considerable distance away from the scene itself, so it’s not as though she immediately thrusts herself into the fray of this bizarre frenzy. But she doesn’t stop, either, just keeps walking steadily onward. 

Jon doesn’t know who to watch: her or the unfortunate population of this town. It’s all so terribly obscure and non sequitur - has _nothing_ to do with their initial mission, but has snared them nonetheless. Of what little was categorized during those months fleeing every horror that lunged their way, this oddity of the Lonely is one they haven’t yet witnessed. It’s entirely understandable they’re all a little transfixed, isn’t it?

Except Martin’s not. Jon catches him in the corner of his eye staring fear-stricken, mouth trembling and agape.

“Stop her,” he whispers, and if it weren’t for the despairing quietness of the town, it would have gone unheard.

But Jon’s listening. 

And he hears. 

And springs into action. With uncanny swiftness, he lunges forward and grabs at Basira, who’s made it far too substantial a distance away in the short time he’s had to process the prospect of the Lonely’s effect on her.

He hauls her back, just as her outstretched hand was threatening to plunge into the half-corporeal form of one of the stragglers lagging behind the group.

“No!” She twists weakly in Jon’s grasp, but he holds firm, and even Martin gets a fist around her bicep, the two of them anchoring her in the tide of her misery as the town marches on, toward the beckoning clock tower.

“Let me _go_ ,” Basira sobs, thrashing without the energy to accomplish any means of escape. 

But still she says, “Let me go let me _go_.”

_With them_ , Jon hears, so very far away from the back of her mind, a malformed thing of longing and loneliness, yes, but there all the same. Dangerous, and possible.

But not if he has anything to fucking say about it. Not if Martin keeps holding her steady, weathering the blows she tries to land - that fail completely, until her fists give way to slack palms, and she subsides into their half-embracing-half-restraining arms. 

So that they can all watch, together, whatever ritual means to transpire of these souls. Whose sonorous misery almost took her, entirely.

Not that Jon can blame them. For there are only victims here. The perpetrators care not for this place anymore. There are still threads woven through, sickly sutures of despair, but they’re fraying, and so, too, is the composure of the group, as at last, they all arrive at the clock tower, crowding around it though never seeming to touch one another at any point. 

As closely as Basira, Jon, and Martin cling to each other, so too do these entities fail to even brush shoulders despite being packed into a singularity of misery. That’s not important though. Well, isn’t as important as what they do next, and Jon is as much a victim as they, still beholden to catalog and devour the esoteric, the impossible, the novel. And this is a _spectacle_ to behold.

For, upon the clock tower, there’s welded a single grate across the clock face, presumably to deter vandalism, when such a thing was of utmost concern. Clinging to the bars, a diminutive figure - no more than an adolescent in stature and only partially spectral - trembles violently, their feet kicking out as they fail to keep a grip on the meager lip of masonry jutting from the indifferent structure.

And gazing up at them, as if enrapt, the crowd simply stares. Untouching. Unsaying. Unyielding. 

And the figure atop the tower is crying, sobbing without sound or relief, watching the crowd back as if they cannot see the hundreds of thronging bodies, their head whipping wildly about, the vague outline of a mouth working uselessly to convey things that will never be heard.

Till they’re thrown suddenly off balance. And their hands come loose. And their meager body plummets to the earth, a howl ripping from their throat like splitting bone, resonant and conclusive and shrill.

The crowd moves. A discrete and vile volition. For it is no longer close enough to the tower, every inch of space between each body suddenly yawning around the foot of the tower, creating a terrible but necessary maw of distance for the terribly young, terribly screaming body to _crunch_ on the pavement mere inches from anyone who may have softened the blow.

Basira and Martin gasp in sharp unison as the impact echoes out. 

But Jon only flinches.

For the body is not broken; it spasms with phantom fractures, with gouts of unspillable blood as translucent skin does not split. And all around it, legs and feet become incorporeal, again, flickering in and out of view as the fog shrouds over and swallows the grisly affair. When it lifts, seconds later, it reveals nothing but the clock tower. The crowd, gone. The tithe, vanished. Just emptiness, and the betrayal, thereof. 

Long and aching seconds transpire into equally chilling mist, but none of them - Jon, Basira, Martin - move, or speak, or even breathe.

Till Martin manages, “What… was that?”

To which Jon immediately replies “Something we were not meant to see,” a bit too wistfully than is appropriate, and with far more conviction behind the words than he could have expected. But he can’t - he _won’t_ deny the awe that’s overcome him at such an appalling show of force.

For there is so much left of the Fears, so much left to _know_ of the many horrible ways they haven’t exerted themselves, yet, and he is all that stands between their brutal, awesome terror - a world blighted, completely - and a world blighted, yes, but healing of that terror. 

And it could start right here. Right in the heart of this town, where no one had seen the mass suicides when they began, where no one batted an eye for the children thrown from their sadness by their parents in the hopes of an escape from the suffusing loneliness that crept its way into each and every home. 

He could unmake the world again, split it open and glimpse its gooey, pulsing dread, pluck at the sinews of new and impossible fears made manifest by something so simple as the lust for knowing them all over again. Just as he has witnessed _this_. The fear of the Fears, themselves. Their final efforts to carve their roots into the world as he toes the line between their untethering and their re-culmination.

Then - 

“ _Martin_.”

Rasped and impossibly thick in his throat, but he gets it out - _spits_ it and swallows back a rising chuckle that is - not - his.

“ _Get me out of here_.”

Martin says nothing, though a barrage of _fearfearfearfear_ assaults Jon’s oversensitive focus as Martin’s hands close around his arms and gently but firmly guide him backwards, step by step, till distance swallows the clock tower, and they turn a corner into a backstreet, and Jon _heaves_ a desperate breath, shuddering loose from Martin and half collapsing against the nearest wall, doubled over and dizzy.

“I c-can’t be near this,” he says, while he still has time to, the heat beneath his bandages pulsing steadily hotter, meaner, _satisfied_.

“I - he’s coming back.”

“ _Jon_.”

This, from Basira, who he hasn’t thought of since the start of that desolate ritual, but she’s here, stanced solidly where they’ve just turned off from the main street, blocking any attempt to return to the square.

He wants to thank her, wants to embrace her, wants to say how sorry he is. But -

_Sharp_.

A split of white heat lances through the left side of his head, and he falls to his knees, cursing and groping blindly for a handhold.

Two hands find his, and he clings to them, doesn’t want to fall - _can’t_ fall. He won’t be another vessel cast to the flagstones, left to bleed out as an offering.

_You. Are. Mine._

_No no no no no._

But it’s… wrong, somehow. Subdued. And Jon realizes it’s not himself pleading. Or. It was. But as he digs his palm into _his_ eye, the script goes askew, and instead it’s just him growling, _threatening_ inside his own head.

_Mine. You are mine._

_Now, fuck - off._

_Jon._

Jon.

“Jon!”

He reels back, falling flat on his arse with a shocked _oof_! and sees Martin and Basira stumbling both forward, the momentum of his tumble and their grip on his hand sending them all comically awry.

“I-I’m okay,” he says stupidly, blinking and wincing all in one as the deep, turgid heat drains down the inside of his left cheek like tar. When it reaches his clavicle, it spiders out and dissipates, leaving a smattering of gooseflesh where it itches under his skin.

“I… I think I told him to bugger off,” he continues hoarsely, depleted of every drop of energy. Though he has enough to laugh. And he does so for a very long time as Basira and Martin stare in abject confusion.

“Wait -”

Martin.

“Hold on -”

Basira.

“Are you - do you mean he’s gone?”

Martin, his inflection a helpless squeak, but Jon shakes his head.

“No - I - no but… for now, yes? I think so. I… think I’m getting the hang of this.”

“Of _what_ ,” demands Basira, not cruelly, but certainly sans an ounce of patience.

“ _This_ ,” Jon gestures to the whole of himself and then flings a hand in the direction of the main street. “He… relished _that_. Just now. That was new. And he wanted it, but - but I held out, and I didn’t let him.”

“So you - you’re in control?”

Martin’s crouched to his level, hands a back and forth indecision of antsy fingertips till he gives in and grabs at Jon again, carefully, but insistently, helping him into a more dignified sitting position.

“For now, yes,” Jon says, more readily than he’s been to share what he knows. 

Because this is so good. This is _progress_. This… this is a hope.

Basira’s not so easily convinced, and of course is far more preoccupied with her own concerns, not just the “Jon’s flip out of the day.”

“So what does that mean for Daisy,” she says.

“I… don’t know,” Jon tries to keep his tone that necessary shade of stark and commiserant, because it feels so _good_ not to know. Means they can reconcile something else, can save Daisy some way _else_.

“She isn’t here, Basira,” he says, to assuage the disappointment of that statement, and because he can’t not indulge the blooming epiphanies in his mind’s addled eye.

  
“She wasn’t part of what happened here.”

To which Basira scoffs, “Yeah, no shit.”

And Jon cocks his head, at an angle just shy of his usual snark.

“Yeah?” His furrowed brow matches hers. “I mean, they all died just this morning. It was a genuine concern she might have gotten caught up in it.”

“ _What_?”

Martin recoils, and the indignity of it emboldens Jon for reasons he can’t parse. His tongue’s too caught up in explaining, in _knowing_ things he should not.

“Well, yes,” he continues, feeling horribly distant from himself but unable to re-tether his sense. “This town’s mostly been fine. The Vast had a go, but there wasn’t much to do here, too idyllic and all that. The Lonely really got to it, though. There was a mass culling around, er, half five or so? I think it might have been an attempted culmination of sorts, but other than that, it was nameless.”

He can’t keep pace with his mouth, and it’s running amok with things he _cannot_ possibly know. And Basira’s expression has deepened from suspicion to outright rage all over again. And she’s taking firm, pounding steps toward him, till she swoops in and grabs him by the collar, yanking his face close to hers.

“ _What are you doing_ ,” she hisses.

“I - I -” that seems to have gummed up the works of his unwarranted loquacity, gives him a chance to refit his mind with his tongue.

“I don’t know,” he finally whispers. “I just… know. I - I didn’t, but I do, now. Christ, I -”

He yelps as Basira releases him. Martin - sat ineffectually dumbstruck at the wayside - is too slow to react and catch him, and Jon grunts as stone digs into his tailbone again.

Basira looks at him for a painfully long moment.

Till finally she asks, a genuine question: “She wasn’t here?” 

Jon shakes his head so fast that something pops in his neck.

“Good,” Basira’s upper lip starts to curl, then her face falls all over again, and she digs her thumb and forefinger into her eyes.

“Can’t use it to find her, can you?” She mutters.

Jon shakes his head again. She doesn’t see, but the physicality of the act grounds him.

“No.”

She scoffs, “Sure.”

He expects further interrogation - hell he’d _welcome_ it, but instead she just turns and meanders to the corner where side street meets main. Slumps more than leans against it. Her silhouette is familiar in an awful way, and Jon can only stare sadly after her for a brief moment before casting his eyes to his shoes. 

“Jon?”

And, always, there’s Martin.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles in return.

Relatively speaking, it is. None of them are hurt, he’s miraculously subdued Magnus out of sheer stubbornness, and Daisy was not swept up in some unforeseen celebration of the Lonely. They’re back at square one, sure, but in a slightly better starting position. Which has to count for something. They have to _make_ it count, or they’ll never get through to another side. Maybe it won’t be together, maybe it won’t even be theirs, but it won’t be here as it is now, and _that_ is something to strive for. 

So he says, “Help me up,” and holds his hand out to Martin, who readily takes, never not _always_ on his side, and he lets Martin fuss over him a bit when he’s on his feet, lets him prod gently at the bandages to ensure they’re fixed tightly, lets him worry those fingers down his cheeks, around his chin, then across his shoulders, till they’re sighing against each other, embraced and relieved and whole.

And Jon distinctly feels Basira _not_ watching them. And his chest aches for her. But it isn’t his to reconcile. All they can do is help her find Daisy, and whatever comes after will have to be satisfaction enough. 

“Let’s go,” he says, quiet and finite, and Martin pulls away, nodding, but not letting go of his arm, his hand, as they walk in step back to the main street.

“There’s nothing for us here.”

This said for all of their sakes, but especially Basira, who’s still leaning against the wall, arms crossed, face pinched tightly. She doesn’t deny him, and neither does she acknowledge him, but there’s no lonely longing wafting around her person, no ogling voice leering out from the stilled depths of her mind.

Jon doesn’t mean to pry, of course not, but… he just has to check. Just to make sure. He won’t lose her, too.

So when she says, “Sure,” he ignores the quiver in her voice and lets her lead them, watches her kick off the wall and turn right, retracing the direction they’d come seeking answers. 

“Home?” Martin whispers beside him.

Jon nods, watching Basira a moment before replying, “Yeah. Home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- eye horror/trauma  
> \- sexual content (implied that Jon is trans, as am I nw)  
> \- implied mass suicide  
> \- child death/implied child death
> 
> Title modified from "Dréan" by Cloud Boat


	4. silhouette to begin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallo! I was aiming to update tomorrow morning-ish but revising broke up a few chapters so that count is going to be higher than anticipated. Which is to say, this one's a tad shorter than the previous ones, but I think it establishes a better flow. Please enjoy! And as always, your feedback and kudos are a delight, thank you <3
> 
> (Scraps, you already know how much we stan <3)
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

Their return to the cabin is vexingly uneventful, a state of unease Basira loathes more than any direct confrontation with an outright predator.

It’s a fickle thing, a heartbroken mind, and hers runs rampant with all manner of terrible thoughts she can’t dispel because any one of them could become her reality. With each bend in the road, there exists infinite possibilities of attack, but none of them transpire, and she _hates_ them for it. Hates the waiting. Hates the _what if’s_.

She tells herself it’s some sort of shock after seeing the public execution of that child and what Jon revealed of the town’s fate. She tries to believe she holds some sympathy for any of them. That it’s not, in fact, the crushing _disappointment_ Daisy wasn’t somewhere amidst the crowd, caught up in the whirlwind seduction of Forsaken as Basira had been. They’ve always had a bit of a lemming mentality to them, despite that being a myth and all. Still, she’d plummet from the cliff’s edge if it meant falling beside Daisy. If it meant putting an end to all this waiting.

That it hasn’t even been 24 hours since her disappearance bears no relation in Basira’s mind. Any moment without Daisy is unacceptable, unbearable. And still the world just teases her along, the trek home perfectly pleasant, with only the sky casting an occasional shadowed glare.

Even the fog fails to deter their party, and they return to the safe house sooner than it took to leave it. Like they never should have left at all.

Which begs the question: how the hell did Daisy get away? What led her so far astray leaving Basira trapped and useless?

Of course, there are no answers, and Basira makes an immediate beeline for their room, nearly setting off three tripwires in her haste to not be near _anyone_ save the meager memories made in their cramped bed. 

“Basira - !” Martin starts, but she’s through the front door and barricading herself before he gets out the rest of whatever useless platitudes he was about to offer.

She doesn’t want to _hear_ it. 

She just wants to be alone.

Because if that is what Daisy wants for her, then she’ll indulge it to excess. She’ll endure without her - miserable and afraid and empty. She’d do anything for Daisy, so she’ll do this, too. She’ll be her own until Daisy comes back, and then she won’t be, anymore, and she just has to hold out till then. Just a little bit longer.

That’s all.

That’s all.

-

“Don’t.”

Jon places a firm hand on Martin’s shoulder, staying him from rushing into the house after Basira, and wringing the brittle chill from Martin’s chest where it had begun tendrilling out in response to the all too familiar bouquet of petrichor in Basira’s wake. 

He wants to protest, Martin does. Really, truly. But that would probably mean putting some type of distance between himself and Jon, and he especially does not want that, for many reasons. First and foremost, the bridge of contact he makes between his palm and Jon’s knuckles, as he rests his hand atop Jon’s. And then the ease of a thumb cradling his chin as Jon’s other hand moves in and guides him back around, to face him. He subsides almost drunkenly into the touch, nuzzling against Jon’s palm, inhaling, exhaling, long and deep and slow.

“Better?” Jon asks, and Martin, his eyes fallen closed at some point, peeks them open to see Jon watching him carefully, his eye nervously aflutter, cataloguing each and every microexpression Martin can’t be bothered to mask. 

“Yeah,” he answers, truthfully. 

And, oh, the relief in Jon’s hapless smile. It melts through him, thawing the last vestiges of despair to a simmering warmth in his stomach.

“Good, well,” Jon strokes his cheek again, fondness and concern wrapped up in the neat little bow of his knit-together brows.”Maybe let’s go inside?”

Ah, yes. They’re doing it again. Being… horrendously affectionate in the midst of the apocalypse. 

What did Jon say? _The world is ending_ , _and I don’t care_.

Well, in this moment - intoxicated by the incredible closeness of Jon and his beautiful hands - neither does Martin. What a pair they do make… 

Which summarily recalls him to another pair, split so carelessly apart, and the pity that had taken his conscience hostage the moment he saw that _look_ on Basira’s face comes wriggling its way back into his chest. A suffocating force of his ever tenacious empathy. Goddammit.

“We need to talk to her,” he murmurs, Jon still mapping the curve of his jaw and staring. Again.

When Martin says this, though, Jon’s face falls to something more… pensive. Sort of. With an undercurrent of expectancy that puzzles Martin. 

On reflex, he reaches out and holds Jon’s face, too, steadying the gaze that suddenly tries to look away.

“What?”

“I…” Jon licks his lip, frowns, like he does when he’s dragging something up from the muddy depths of his memory. 

“You wanted to tell me something,” he says, eventually. “Last night, you said you had something to tell me, but that it needed to wait.”

It’s Martin’s turn to blink, bewildered, Jon’s comment incredibly vague in a way that’s both reassuring - because it means he’s not rooting around Martin’s head - but also vexing because Martin’s mind is of one track at the moment: that being all the horrible things they’ve witnessed in the past 24 hours and how much he just wants to curl up with Jon and sleep for as man bloody years.

Then, as Jon’s thumb brushes beneath his lip, just as he did over and over again in the glowing haze of their… activities atop the hill last night, it comes full force _slamming_ back into Martin’s already fractured nerves.

Oh

_Oh_.

Right… _that_.

Uh.

Fuck.

He immediately tries to play it down. It is _not_ the time for that, not by any conceivable stretch. Today’s already been a clusterfuck of everything under the sunless eyes, and that is not something he has the head (or heart) space to approach Jon about. Hell, he hasn’t even had time to _think_ about it to any sort of plausible conclusion. 

Christ… 

But, he also can’t stand to lie to Jon.

“I…”

He bites the bullet, and, steadily as he can, meets the full force of Jon’s gaze. He deserves that, at least.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about it,” he says. “Not right now. It’s not bad, Jon, I promise, but it’s… a lot.”

Jon’s frown deepens, to a degree just shy of fear that makes Martin’s ribs clench, but Jon’s hands are still so gentle against his face, still reflective of the trust he holds Martin accountable to.

“Hm…”

Martin watches several indiscernible expressions twist across Jon’s face, till it settles on tired resignation.

“Well… I - I’ll do my best not to spoil anything, then,” Jon says, a meek laugh hidden in his inflection.

Which is a good sign. A fucking _great_ sign. Is a breath of relief pushing out the stale inhale Martin hadn’t noticed he’d trapped beneath the tight knot in his throat.

“Thank you,” he says, and wishes he could convey to Jon how terribly much he means that. “I just need some time.”

Jon smiles, full and slightly sad and lovely. Leaning in, he brushes a kiss to the corner of Martin’s mouth.

Lingering there, he says, “Of course.”

Martin shivers, and before his brain can catch up with him, he turns his head and captures Jon’s mouth in a full kiss. 

“Inside?” Jon mumbles at length, and Martin lets go where he’s - oops - dug his grip in a bit at Jon’s waist and the back of his neck.

“Hah. Yeah, maybe let’s.”

And they don’t exactly leave their worries at the doorstep, but neither does the world thrust its unwelcome girth into their home, brought to heel as Martin ferries Jon inside and closes the door, firmly. It feels good. Like the space after a full stop, a chance for something else to pick up the narrative flow.

Everything is fresh all over again. So much awfulness has transpired, and now they must stitch the wounds and tend to healing. They have to console Basira. They have to find Daisy. They have to assess the parameters of Magnus’s influence. 

He has to… 

Well, not yet. Later. All of this, later. None of that can be accomplished in the next few hours so… later.

That, Martin can do. And, for now, he has Jon. They have the quietude of the house. And a bed to share, and things not to discuss, and closeness to make use of. And the world is dormant, docile. Possibly hunched and waiting to spring, but that will come in its own time. And Martin can wait until then.

_______________________________________________

  
  


And then the world _stays_ outside, and everything stagnates as they fail to decide what to do next.

Three days. Three useless, rotting-by-the-wayside days, and _nothing_ is accomplished. And nothing pounces. And nothing _happens_.

Basira refuses to emerge from her room anymore than necessary, which equates to once at the crack of dawn to use the downstairs toilet (the lack of the generator kicking on indicates she’s bathing with cold water - _Christ_ ) and the only evidence that she’s eating at all is when she forgets to close a cupboard or leaves a glass on the counter. Which… well at least she _is_ eating, even if none of their food supplies are noticeably dwindling.

Jon, for his part, does just as little. There’s so much to think about, and now that he has the time to, it’s the last damn thing he _wants_ to do. Every moment since he woke up in the cabin has been bombarded with horror after agony after breakdown. But Magnus is still quiet. His sleep bears no malice, that he can tell. And he’s left to feel even more like the tiger than Magnus could ever portend, pacing and pacing (sometimes even literally) till his nerves threaten to fall through his teeth.

Which isn’t to say they haven’t tried to plot some - _any_ \- course of action. But there’s only the countryside for miles and miles around them. And if that’s where Daisy’s gone, then they’ve as little hope of finding her as they do choosing the right cardinal direction. 

Basira is about as emotionally available when Martin happens to cross paths with her morning-route-of-pilfering-a-single-apple, the second day following their failed mission to the town.

Well, crossing paths is generous, at best. He’d been blearily tromping down the steps, and what he glimpsed of her was swiftly shut up in her and Daisy’s room before he had any time to process it. 

He doesn’t tell Jon, who’s taken up either sleeping like the fitful dead, or sitting by the window, staring out across the hills. He’s not ignoring Martin, by any means, but it’s all just a bit… conversationally bereft in the wake of yet another anticlimax.

Really, it’s a miracle that the days pass at all, what for how slowly the time slinks by. Martin, determined not to let the brackish temptation of _nothing_ eke into his veins, spends as much of it as he can fussing. Over Jon when he mutters in his sleep, and when he wakes gasping but unable to recall anything concrete from his dreams. It’s Magnus, of course it is, but the distinct lack of, well, distinct _ness_ reassures them both, lets them believe _his_ grasp is still compromised. 

After that, Jon retreats into his own world by the window, and Martin sets about cleaning, making the bed and taking stock of how much gauze and antiseptic they have left. Then it’s down to the kitchen to try (and fail) to catch Basira again. Then it’s organizing their foodstuffs, bringing something up for Jon to pick at. Next, it’s ensuring the generator is in good repair. Then, checking the tripwires outside and the deadlocks inside are intact. Then cleaning some more, making tea, bringing tea to Jon, drinking tea in silence with Jon.

And it’s not even half one at that point.

Truth be told, he’s starting to go more than a bit stir crazy, and no one will break the icy resolve of their own stubborn grief, so it’s all he has: just this awful cycle of pointless tasks. Which isn’t wholly true with regard to Jon, but he’s so contemplative that Martin can’t bring himself to approach anything more severe than perhaps too hot a cuppa. And with the - er - progress Jon is sort of making, it might come to pass he doesn’t need to discuss the idea that’s been mulling around Martin’s head since that wonderful, fateful night atop the hill. When he’d found himself completely exposed by Jon’s lovely, loving gaze and the idea struck him - ludicrous but promising an outcome too good, too _hopeful_ to not at least spare for a second thought.

But, just like everything else, it now lays by the wayside, useless and immobile. 

By the third day, Martin’s ready to scream, but even that energy has long been spent on trying to coax Jon into something other than a state of half-lucid dissociation. If they could just _talk_. He knows there’s more to this than defeated resignation, more than whatever vapors the Lonely dug under their skin after bearing witness to such sinister barbarity. 

Martin knows the Lonely, and this is not that. It _can’t_ be that. They didn’t come all this way to be swallowed into their own goddamn self inflicted obscurity.

Which is why, he doesn’t leave when he brings Jon breakfast: a meager slice of bread slathered in preserves and a glass of water. Both of them know he won’t eat more than a nibble, so Martin’s spared the extra effort to make the pitiful meal look like more than it actually is. It’s the pretense, because rations are another damn concern, but he doesn’t want Jon to think he’s enabling his little hunger strike.

_You need to actually eat._

_You know I don’t._

_I also don’t care. Eat._

Those were simpler times… when Jon played a more suitable martyr and Martin would bully him around a bit to get him to stop wallowing and thinking himself a monster. Now the lines are blurred beyond reconciliation, and everything’s gone grey-wash with an implacable pallor. Human, monster, friends, death, it’s all muddled into one terrible, stooping apathy, bending their resolve into a diseased slouch of _what-do-we-even-do-anymore_.

Which is why, when Jon finishes pushing his toast around the plate and manages two swallows of water, Martin gets to his feet and holds out a hand. It’s entirely off script, and Jon blinks at him for a second, stunned.

“We’re going out,” Martin says. 

“Beg pardon?” Jon stares at his hand, as if stymied by the prospect of taking it.

“Fresh air,” Martin clarifies, without actually meaning it. He couldn’t give a damn about that, and honestly doesn’t think it’s much better to breathe out there than in here, but the walls have been closing in for two days straight, and he’s fed right the hell up.

“A walk, I don’t care. I just… can’t take it here anymore.”

“Oh… okay?”

A bit creakily, Jon stands, too, and Martin retracts his hand, the gesture more implied than anything.

“Right, um,” suddenly shy, being the object of Jon’s direct line of sight after forty-eight hours with about as many words shared between them, Martin rubs the back of his neck, and a small smile creeps across his mouth, unbidden.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and casts his eyes to his feet.

Jon’s own hand immediately complicates that, catching his chin and lifting it.

“Why?”

A genuine question. No ulterior motive, no tingling at the back of his throat. Just an honest to God leap of faith Jon’s taking for him.

So Martin is just as honest.

“Because I don’t know what to do.”

A beat. 

“You know,” Jon’s eye softens from its intense scrutiny, flicks down, up, settles at a midpoint on Martin’s face. 

“You don’t have to fix everything, Martin.”

He does know. Of course he does. But that’s stupid and wrong and out of the four - _three_ (four??) - of them, he’s the most capable of enacting any sort of change, any chance at a positive outcome. He yet has an ace up his sleeve, but it’s not the time to reveal, and he’s _tired_ of waiting for it, so tired. But loving Jon has taught him an infinite patience. So, yes, he _will_ fix this. Will see them all made whole again, whatever that means in the end.

And for now, he’s going to get out of this everything-forsaken house, is going to take Jon with him, and they’re going to not think about _everything_ for a little while. And it will be _good_.

He can’t say all that. Of course not. So he doesn’t, and instead gently guides Jon’s hand away, pauses, kisses the inside of his palm, then lets go.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

He hates lying to Jon, in part because it’s sometimes impossible if Jon is after the truth by whatever means necessary, and it’s also just… bad. Feels bad. _Is_ bad. But this… is okay. He’ll tell Jon in time, when they’re under duress of higher stakes and Jon isn’t occupying about as much emotional space as a dust bunny.

“Just making sure,” Jon says.

And Martin’s heart has never felt heavier.

-

He doesn’t ask if it’s safe or not. He’s been watching the hills for days, and nothing has revealed itself. There’s only the eyes above, glaring mirrors he refuses to address, and the spindly tendrils of fog that curl atop the grass each morning and evening. It’s about 11 now, so there’s not even the risk of that. All in all, it’s perfectly ideal conditions for a walk, but even with his senses dulled following Magnus’s attempt to devour one of the Lonely’s more vulgar displays, he knows that’s not what this is about. 

Or, mostly, anyway. He won’t deny it feels marginally better stepping out into the wind-whipped air, the soil giving way slightly beneath his feet as he and Martin pick their way through the maze of tripwires. 

Ignoring the weight of the pocket knife tucked in his jeans, he might even consider it all a bit twee, like that shop in town selling handmade ceramics and herb bundles. Martin had admired a painted cat while Jon tapped into the well of his infinite distaste to determine whether the bowl of free crystals by the door was a one-per-guest sort of honor system, or if he could just up and nab the whole thing out of spite. A comment he made to Martin who snorted heartily and smacked his shoulder. 

If ever this is all over, Jon’s going to go back to that shop, buy that cat, and take every damn rock he can fit into his pockets.

He clings to that, like he does to Martin’s hand, the prospect of _The Future_ an impossible thing, but one he can’t help indulging. Distantly, he remembers that night that seems so long ago, now, when he thought about missing things. 

That’s more tangible, at present. Daisy. First. Foremost, but even she’s disappearing to the sidelines. Really, Jon’s not sure what’s tethering his melancholy anymore. His eye. _His_ eye. Daisy. Martin. Basira. That poor child. The town, entire. Inevitabilities. Impossibilities.

At the very least, the crisp air helps him think a bit more clearly. Not that there’s much up in his head anyway. But it feels nice to let the cobwebs snap off and billow around. It's nice to know there’s space enough for that to happen at all, that Magnus is still quiet. Starved out.

Another little detail Jon’s decided not to impart to Martin. 

_Yes, Martin, love, sorry I haven’t been enjoying your dear little meals. You wouldn’t happen to have a spot of trauma on you at all? Only I’m famished._

Yeah. That’ll go over _real_ well. And two days isn’t so bad. Loathe as he is to admit it, what incrementally little Magnus managed to siphon from the Lonely has kept the gnawing worst of his headaches and nausea at bay, and he’s survived on far less substantial depravity, besides.

He’s set a goal for himself, anyway. Until Martin tells him whatever it is he’s keeping so closely secret, neither will Jon let on to his woes. He also actively chooses _not_ to think about how vindictive that is. It’s not Martin’s fault, any of this. Jon simply has his own motivations, his own motions he needs to know the fruition of. Much as he loves Martin, sometimes they must operate as their own entities. 

For now, though, Jon is content to ignore the brief pulses of dizziness that tease his eye line, to hold Martin’s hand, and let him lead them out into the hills.

Save for the wind, the day is utterly docile, the sky clear enough in some places that a weak trickle of sun leaks through and spills atop the fields like a brocade patchwork. It really is beautiful up here, apocalypse or not. And Jon’s starting to lean more towards the latter. All that led them here is so far away anymore. It really would just be so easy to slip into the mist, to forget it all and never be known again by any of the things that have hunted them so far from sanity. So so easy...

“ _Jon_.”

Jon surfaces from his stupor, and Martin’s looking at him, like it’s all they have anymore for each other, with each other. A sentiment that makes Jon’s whole body tense up, and he moves swiftly, kisses Martin’s cheek.

“M’fine.”

Martin squeezes his hand. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And they walk on. Not talking. But also not _not_ talking. It’s nicely deliberate, a no-words-needed kind of thing they accept without protest. There’s enough in each other’s heads, and neither of them are keen to have it spill out yet. Baby steps. Progress. As it were.

They don’t go far, but it’s far enough to have the house disappear from sight behind a thick treeline, and, here, Martin stops them.

Jon begins to ask a question; he doesn’t really have one in mind but it seems like the right thing to do. Just as well, Martin seems to be following a similar script of pantomime, although the kiss he pulls Jon into is far from feigned or obligatory. No, it’s soft and yielding and drenched with near-decadent sighs so perfectly juxtaposed to the misery of an hour ago, that Jon can’t help laughing when they break apart again.

“Martin Blackwood,” he accuses, “you’re not about to have me _here_ , too, are you?”

Martin chuckles in turn, full and heady like a strong pint, invigorating to the senses and just the right amount of bubbly. It makes Jon’s soul feel dipped in sun.

“Don’t be crass, love,” Martin smiles, wan but warm.

Jon smiles back, “On the contrary, I’d say that was decently coy.”

“Bugger,” Martin pulls him in again, but this time brushes his lips to Jon’s forehead. A fan of warm air puffs over Jon’s hairline, and he closes his eye to the sheer bliss of the sensation.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and squeezes Martin’s arms where he’s holding onto them.

“Of course,” Martin sighs back.

“This help?” Jon asks, because he has to know at least _that_. Sod everything else, but if Martin’s feeling better, then it’s worth something.

Martin inhales deeply, exhales another breath into Jon’s hair. It tickles. It’s wonderful.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “Yeah, I think so.”

A heretofore unnoticed knot in Jon’s chest loosens, and he sags against Martin, burying his face in his neck.

“Good,” he says.

He’s not sure he’s ever meant anything more in his life.

He hopes he never will.

_______________________________________________

  
  


The first thing that confounds Martin is how in the _hell_ Basira has gotten hold of a cigarette. 

The second is, why she’s sat on the stoop smoking said cigarette with the front door swinging ajar, inviting all manner of cold and fog inside. Because she shouldn’t have a cigarette, she doesn’t smoke, and she shouldn’t be stupid enough to _leave the bloody door open._

She doesn’t even look up when they approach, just pulls a deep drag, hangs her head, and releases a cloud of acrid smoke that encircles her not unlike a shroud. Or a particularly macabre veil. 

Particulars aside, she’s a right fucking mess, and Martin wastes no time closing the distance between them, Jon in tow like a kicked puppy. 

“What are you doing.”

Basira looks up, squinting, and lets her head loll sidelong as she hisses out a thick, curling cloud of grey.

“Smoking,” she says blandly. “S’at not obvious, Blackwood?”

Then, with vindictively put-on joviality, “Oi, Jon!” and she brandishes the cigarette in a sarcastic wave as Jon better asserts himself in the scene. “Care for a fag? Bet you’ve been gasping, mate.”

“Basira -” Jon starts, but gets no further than that as she abruptly hauls herself to her feet, sucks a _deep_ lungful from the cigarette, and spits the smoke back out, growling, “Glad you two had a romantic little romp. Now that you’re back with the rest of us, care to sort this shit out?”

Though he has a solid 7 inches on her, Basira towers over Martin with the sheer force of her fury. Still, he tries to hold his ground, and snaps right back, “What the hell are you talking about?”

And then he watches as Basira’s face undergoes a veritable tirade of emotions. A burning malice within her eyes, then a deep sorrow burrowing across her brow, then a manic smile stitching up the corners of her grimacing mouth as she inhales again, and laughs, high and hysterical. 

When the smoke clears, Martin sees tears.

“I -” Basira keeps smiling, even as she shakes her head. “I don’t know. Martin, _Christ_ , I don’t - just -”

She collapses back onto the stoop, propping an elbow on her knee, and her head in her hand. The one holding the cigarette continues gesticulating, weakly, and motions for the door.

And Martin’s pulse once more sinks its claws into his throat as he looks from Basira, to Jon, and sees his own epiphany mirrored in Jon’s widening eye.

It’s hard to say who moves first, who stumbles over the threshold to witness the impossible that is, of course, made possible just for the goddamn hell of it. Martin would like to think they’re neck in neck, him and Jon, but that’s patently false, in the end. Because he ends up behind Jon, staggering in his wake as they rush inside, barrel through the foyer, and turn the corner into the kitchen to see -

Well. 

See… this is where it gets complicated. 

Because what _Martin_ sees is very much contingent upon how he engages with most of the world - the surface level of symbolism that, while most others hardly ever scratch at all, still relegates his poetry to the sidelines of mediocrity. Such it is, that he takes in the two figures in the kitchen as merely that with only a _smidge_ more. He understands the gravity of their presence, the fist-to-the-face of the last three days being all for naught. But it’s a skin deep, gooseflesh kind of shock, and there are yet _fathoms_ to the scene before him, unfolding their pale tendrils, grasping for a handhold he can’t provide.

Jon, however, is everything they could want, and infinitely more. A vessel touched. One, Known. Who unveils the image before one and _another’s_ eye, peeling back the scab to ogle the pulsing wound beneath, enthralled of the blood that wells staunchly to that otherwise unmarred surface. _Desecrating_ that surface. Skin and blood, so he can carve to the _bone_ of it with gaze alone…

And gaze he does, as Daisy fails to even scent his presence. Or Martin’s. Or anything beyond the immediate circumference of the strange little world she’s made for herself.

And made with another. 

They’re a… person, insofar as Jon can posit, though they reek of something disfigured that immediately raises his hackles. But the whole situation is so astoundingly odd, that he’s reluctant to pursue any course of inference beyond gaping at the scene. Till he’s taken it all in and can unravel some linearity.

For there is Daisy, yes, and there is this _other_ person: a child, not unlike the one that fell from the clock tower. They’re sat on the kitchen floor, with as much of Daisy curled in their lap as she can fit. Which equates to mostly her head, and one hand fisting tightly into the child’s trouser leg. Her own eyes are impregnable, screwed shut and racing to and fro beneath the too-thin lids. The child, meanwhile, sits ramrod straight, their body frozen, the fingers of their right hand nesting amidst the short shock of Daisy’s matted hair. 

It’s a jarring image, certainly, but it’s not what makes _his_ eye thrash against the bandages, as though it might leap out of its socket and devour the child whole.

Because the child’s entire head is encased in rank, soiled cloth, and it’s from this that the miasmal _wrongness_ emanates in wafting, cloying crests - the sight taking on almost a smell, like that of roadkill on too warm a day. Putrid and cooking and _nearly_ delicious. If you were starved enough to venture a mouthful.

And both eyes in Jon’s skull all but _drink it in_.

He’s closing in before he even registers the motion of his feet, the _salivation_ bubbling up beneath his bandages. 

He’s seven feet away.

_Freya Lockaby._

Five and a half.

_She lived above the twee shop and spent too much time at the library, in the hills without supervision._

Two.

_And watched when the sky blinked and the fog rolled in._

Eleven and three quarter centi -

_Just like them all. Starving._

He’s there. His vision pounding. His throat racing for the ambrosial trickle of this child’s every scrap of witnessed _everything_. 

Till Daisy opens her eyes, and they’re so far gone. Shot through with fatigue and acceptance. Submission and relief. Grief. Love.

“So we can show Basira,” she says, and it takes every last ounce of Jon’s flagging willpower to deny the tantalizing _knowledge_ that laps at the edges of his mind, a maelstrom masquerading as a placid sea breeze. 

He doesn’t. He _can’t_ . Whatever Freya Lockaby means to Daisy, he _won’t_ know it. 

_He_ won’t.

_No._

“Yes, Jon,” Daisy rasps, as Freya’s grip tightens in her hair, and her mummified head tilts up, and Jon _sees_ what lurks beneath.

Like him.

Almost like _him_.

And entirely _else_ , with such a grotesque, milky white glare, that he nearly vomits. 

“ _Stop_.”

So weak. Weak as Daisy, surely. Can’t she sympathize? Please _please_ stop… 

Oh, he’s on his knees, splinters burning into skin. And his head’s in his hands - that page scoured neatly from Basira. And it’s quite effective, allowing him to worm his fingers into his bandages as Martin’s close around his shoulders, his chest. That’s pretty ineffectual, Jon wants to say. The eye’s not in his heart. Not there, love.

Does he even have a heart anymore? He hasn’t ever thought to check, actually. He must do, right? Has to, for the pulse and its caterwauling throughout him. But how can he be sure? How can he know the blood unless he tears it out?

It’s this that shocks him from the stupor, sends him reeling all over again. He hears Martin around him, hears vague and indecipherable pleading. But all that truly matters is what he sees. On the floor in front of him. Daisy reaching out. Her eyes gone so cold, a slack smile on her lips. Relief. Gratitude. 

And then fingers. Small and grubby and chipped-at-the-nail-beds, slipping down from her hairline, over her brows, pushing shut her eyelids. 

_Snap_.

Jon _howls_. Soundless and breathy and keeling-over-fetally.

There’s no hurt, exactly. Just the knowledge there probably _should_ be. And that there isn’t, this is somehow the worst of it. They should hurt more. Him and Daisy and, yes, Freya Lockaby. But they understand too much of each other. Themselves. Of monstrosity and the pointless pursuits to outrun it, outlive it, out-starve it.

It always comes around, in the end, the spanner in their sprint.

There’s more… purpose to this, though. To Daisy’s return and Freya Lockaby. Both are resigned to whatever fate they’ve deemed most acceptable. And, well. Apparently that’s him. What he can do for them. What he can take, simple as drawn blood, just a bite to the skin and vein. Rote. Perfunctory. 

Daisy went to find proof. And now Jon can help two souls find peace. One: a jilted beat. The other: closed and clarified.

_Jon._ Jon. “Jon!”

Ah… he’s getting better at that, Martin is. Jon wonders what kind of sign that is - what it means for them.

Presently, it means Martin’s provided ballast once more, plumbed him up from the depths and settled him sputtering on rocky land. 

“It’s not him,” Jon gasps.

“ _Jon_.”

“It’s just us. I promise.”

Martin’s been behind him this whole time, pulling Jon back against his chest; he amends this position, now, shuffles awkwardly on his knees so he can ensnare Jon in both his hands and his eyes. His pupils pleading. The whole of it exhausting, beautiful, and unbearable to observe.

“Promise,” Martin says.

Not a question.

“Always,” Jon breathes.

And maybe later, he’ll pray that was an answer.

-

After that, it takes a fair amount of both emotional and mental coaxing to bring the atmosphere down to tenable levels of disbelief. Which is about when Basira trudges into the kitchen and haunts the vague space between the table and the place where Daisy and the child are beginning to untangle from one another. 

Martin acknowledges her at some point and tries to explain whatever just happened, but she brandishes a fierce hand, cutting him off before he can even start.

Whatever it is, she’ll hear it from Daisy, and Daisy, alone. Or she’ll hear it not at all. Which, at this point, she is more than okay with. She’s not even sure how civilly she can approach Daisy, all things fucking considered. Betrayal after heartache after _fury_ … she’s so tired of it. So tired of chasing this thing down, searching out the resolution that she’s not sure ever even existed.

But she has to know it from Daisy. Or she’ll know nothing ever again.

“Basira…”

It’s a valiant effort to stymie the warm flutter that bursts in her chest at the sound of Daisy’s voice, her cadence still r-curlingly-melodic in spite of the bloodshot quality. She mostly succeeds, and only wobbles a _little_ as she breaks and moves in, swift, aching, wanting without reason or result. Except Daisy in her arms. Daisy’s mouth against hers.

Everything else is secondary: the muffled _mmf!_ the child gives as she falls to the wayside of Basira’s embrace. The startled words Martin says, Jon says, that have no bearing on her, so are not heard in any sort of clarity. Not even the clammy cold of Daisy’s hands as they seek her face, her throat, and touch warily, afraid of what they might rip out if they’re not careful.

But Daisy has never been anything toward Basira save _that_. And selfless, and brutal, and beautiful. And loved. 

And she can’t help it, Basira, her demands rising through her throat before she can swallow them again, pushed against Daisy’s lips by her own, as both try not to cry.

_Why. Where. Who. When. Why why why why why why why._

“Because you have to see,” Daisy answers, more readily than Basira could ever have hoped.

Then, “M’so tired, Basira.”

And, “Want you to know it’s okay.”

And, “M’gonna be okay.

And, “I love you.

“And I’m ready.”

The problem is, Basira has always been so terribly selfish when it comes to Daisy. Always hiding things, diverting blame, justifying the violence for the sake of their relationship, their safety.

And the problem is, they’ve always been on the same _side_ of selfish.

And the problem is, now they’re not.

And Basira can’t let her go.

_No_ , says her heart, while her tongue offers only choked sobs, which she hopes Daisy takes for concession. So it can maybe buy her some time. And it’s not lying, after all, if she doesn’t actually say anything. Daisy has never sought lucidity in the same way, so she’ll be able to endure this until Basira finds the solution. Until she finds a way for Daisy to live and live _with_ herself, for that. For not dying. And not killing. And just _being_.

For now, though, there’s the veneer of _“I love you_ . _”_

For now, it’s not a lie.

Semantics aside, there’s still the surface level reality to unpack. There’s still Daisy, weak and flagging miserably as Basira helps her to her feet, swatting away offers of assistance, and leveraging icy glares for good measure. Till they’re once more sequestered in their room leaving Martin and Jon to pick up the pieces, left over. 

Those mainly being: Freya Lockaby, who Martin is _hopelessly_ baffled by and - no, actually it’s mostly just her at the moment. Jon tries to explain in as succinct a fashion as he can, but it’s _so fucking much, good lord_. And even then, he only knows the most pressing facts. 

Name. Age. There’s a horrible, menacing, licking-its-chops _inkling_ prodding at his brain stem, and Jon staunchly denies it anything. Not until Daisy is coherent enough to explain why she’s dragged a - a victim of the Eye over their doorstep, and left her here like a cat with a prize quail’s head.

Which is another thing he does _not_ want to think about - dirtied as Freya’s bandages look. He took only a brief glimpse of her wounds beneath, and although he won’t infer further, he knows enough that he does not want to see the extent of the Watcher’s claim on this poor child.

_Christ_. She… really is just a child, though, isn’t she. No more than a frail whisp where she’s still sat on the floor while he and Martin almost literally dance around the issue - shuffling awkwardly, reaching for one another’s hands, deciding otherwise, opening and closing their mouths like beached fish as words fail them.

“How… did she escape?”

Martin eventually asks this, when they’ve exhausted all avenues of approaching Freya and instead have resigned themselves to sagging in chairs at the table, watching her surreptitiously. At least they tell themselves this, anyway. Neither cares to admit she’s more than a little ghoulish, and that they’re both grateful to _not_ have to look at her anymore than is absolutely necessary.

But… the elephant and the room, and all that. At the very least, Martin seems to have more comprehensive questions than Jon, who’s been cycling through the same scraps of information to keep his mind from baring its teeth and devouring Freya, whole.

To that question, he’s _relieved_ to be able to give only a shrug, to be able to guess rather than sip his parched tongue around the fount of scalding knowledge his headache has begun to untap.

“D’know,” he murmurs. “She… liked to roam the fields around the town. Maybe she was out.”

“At half five in the morning?”

Martin sounds more accusatory than Jon knows he means to be, but that’s also a good point. What reason would a pre-teen have to be wandering the outdoors at the crack of dawn? In the middle of the end of the world?

_Unless… she kn -_

Miraculously, he masks the growl that rises in his throat with a cough, though it draws Martin’s attention nonetheless. 

“M’fine,” he waves away the searching gaze Martin offers him.

“Just… _Christ_ , just want to figure this all out.”

A beat. So many of them anymore, but so few of them possessing any actual rhythm. Or a pulse.

“You could ask,” Martin finally says.

“No,” Jon firmly kills the inquest in its cradle, doing his best to ignore Martin’s wounded frown. “I’m not - that’s not what Daisy wants. For her or - or -” he motions to Freya, who, for all her face is entirely covered, seems to be staring at them, head cocked, slightly, giving off an inquisitive air. 

“She has her reasons,” Jon continues, unsure, himself, if he means Daisy, Freya, or both. “I have to respect that. I have to wait.”

Which… well. In theory, yes. In the practice of good manners and respectability, of course. Waiting is the only logical course of inaction. 

In the matter of even his most dulled down mind still limping around for resolutions, spurred by the dormant, awful thing that skulks after it? That is less… yes.

Less sure of itself. And _terribly_ taunted by the prospect of _more_ and _new_ and _imagine the violence she’s seen, the horrors she’s accepted. What must you do to a twelve year old girl to render her so utterly intriguing, my Archive?_

Jon sucks in a sharp breath and grinds a metaphorical heel into the grin sunning itself beneath his bandages.

_Shut up_.

The tiger laughs, but offers nothing more. Jon’s not sure how good that is, but it’s not the main concern. Unless Magnus wants to properly bare his teeth like he did in town, then Jon could care less about him right now.

“Okay.”

And Martin’s tethering him back in the real world, holding his hand to his lips and dusting the knuckles with a sad, soft smile.

“Of course, Jon.”

They stay sat like that for some time. Unspeaking. Unmoving. Unseeing of the child who watches them back. But neither of them know this, and there is no malevolence to her intent, so it’s of little consequence, all around. Like the rest of them, she’s a circumstantial victim, and her presence in the present means little beyond whatever must be done to accommodate her. 

And what she means for the future, well, that’s still beyond the moment, and there’s time enough to yet stay here. Where everything is untouched. And everything is quiet. And all of them are, more or less, together.

-

“Why did you do it.”

“Basira -”

“Don’t -” Basira holds up her hand, not threatening, not cruel or dismissive or angry. She’s just tired of capitulating to everyone else, prioritizing everything that isn’t answering any of her damn questions.

“Please,” she tacks on, and mostly means it, because it’s _Daisy_ and she loves her and she isn’t mad, she _isn’t_ , but she needs answers, and she needs them now.

Daisy watches her hand, gaze stubbornly refusing to lift. Until Basira brings her arms around herself, suddenly chilled to the core, and then Daisy’s beautiful, wolfish eyes snap to attention, devouring the tears Basira won’t let spill over.

“Because I need you to see,” Daisy says.

She’s so far away, knees curled to her chest where she’s nested among the pillows on the bed, while Basira stands guard at the foot.

“Because I took what was done to me, and I made it something worthwhile.”

Such _conviction_. Or perhaps abdication. A submission to her haunt, and in so doing, a denial, thereof. The result of her giving in to it, then giving birth to the freedom she could never find on her own.

But she’s not alone. Has never _been_ alone. It’s always been _them_ . They are supposed to solve these things, be each other’s crutches. It was never Daisy and the Hunt. It was Daisy and _her_ , and her violence came secondary, the rage within her a quietable thing if only she would let Basira soothe it. Or tend it. Or enrage it. Depending… always, always dependent.

And that is no more. Now there is only Daisy as herself, a choice made in agony, and made by her _for_ her. Basira had no bearing. And Daisy is letting her in for this finality. For the reconciliation of so many years of heartache and bloodshed and them-against-it-all. 

“Jon can do the same for me,” Daisy is saying, “ _and_ that girl.

“She’s not a - a sacrifice, Basira. Or a _test_.”

Basira almost laughs. Because that’s _exactly_ what the child is. Maybe not to Daisy, maybe not even to Jon, but to her? She’s the final lynch pin, the contingency that will either make or mar Basira’s acceptance.

Which isn’t to say she’s okay with this at all. But she’ll go along with Daisy’s little charade, and, meanwhile, she’ll formulate something better, something _actual_ , because this is merely a waking nightmare, and Basira knows how to kill those, point blank.

This one’s a bit trickier, for sure, but she’s clever, she can suss it out. 

So she… doesn’t acknowledge what Daisy says, but does loosen her posture and move onto the bed so she can touch Daisy and remember how real she is, and how much she’s worth doing everything for.

And she’s so dirty, Daisy is, her skin tanned over with streaks of dirt and caked mud, her fingernails a wreck, her clothes sweat stained and torn. 

Grasping for something that isn’t misguidedly profound or, God forbid, too congenial, Basira says, just a little bit hoarse, “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?” and sets about guiding Daisy back onto her feet and helping her shuffle to the door.

Here, they pause, as Basira remembers _who_ is on the other side of that door. Her hand’s already on the doorknob, though; she can’t just pull away. It’s never that easy.

Until Daisy’s hand joins hers, curling around hers, steadying her. 

“You’ll understand,” Daisy says, barely a whisper as she leans her cheek on Basira’s shoulder. “I did this for you.”

_I never asked you to_ , Basira does not say, but it wouldn’t matter either way. This is the end of Daisy’s pursuit, and there is nothing she can do to pry the teeth from their prize. This is the end, and it’s a privilege to even be there, alive to see it, with Daisy and the only other two who could possibly fathom what she is being asked of.

This is the end, and it has never been so gentle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- isolation  
> \- mild body horror  
> \- child neglect/abuse (kind of)
> 
> Chapter title modified from "Death with Dignity" by Sufjan Stevens


	5. Covered eyes in unborn hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please enjoy <3
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

It wasn’t Daisy who found her. Not entirely. Funny, really, how the Hunt devours and spits you back out, like a buckshot spray seeking flesh and sinew, but there’s so much of you that misses the mark, so you keep on and on, hoping to find the rest of your quarry.

Daisy found half of hers, and the child found the other, and together, they made up a whole and discovered there could be resolution, at last.

She’d had no initial foresight. When she slunk from the bed and refused to look back for Basira, Daisy was a beast possessed only of a singular thought: _find an avatar, bring them to Jon, prove he’s good and can do good for me_.

~~Not a test.~~

And then she discovered the child, hiding in the hills miles from the nearby village. And the blood in her bones boiled to a standstill, went sticky and dormant and docile as she took the shivering thing in her arms and limped them both back to the safe house. She didn’t look beneath the rags, and neither did the child cower from the snarl of Daisy’s presence, the both of them foiled in some kind of stalemate, as though providing an antithesis to one another. Daisy had found. And the child was seen. What an odd and uncomfortable miracle. Yet one all the same.

Daisy didn’t think on the gravity of finding one burdened of the Beholding until they were too far over the threshold and staggering into the kitchen. Which was where Daisy then dropped her in an unceremonious heap before doing the same with herself. And then she waited to be found one more time.

Well, twice more, thrice if she’s counting Martin apart from Jon (which… not really at this point, or ever.)

But the first was Basira, and so little was exchanged between them. Basira tried, oh did she ever endeavor to spur the blood beneath Daisy’s skin, her cheeks, her tongue, as she held Daisy, kissed her, berated her. But Daisy had made her peace, this bore no malice against her, and finality arrived only with Jon.

It… was all a bit more euphemistic than she’d intended, which was perhaps most frustrating of all. Even at the best of times, she’d never enjoyed the grandiose or coy, and had torn up many a perp in her day when they went on self indulgent tangents possessing more syllables than an entire thesaurus. But there she was, spilling her guts in a glut of esoteric babble, unable to just _say_ what she wants, what she hopes to achieve with this.

So she has to hope that Jon just… understands. That, although the abstruse infects even her, it can still be as simple as the Hunt often lauded itself to be. There’s subtlety to everything, and now it can be properly put to rest, hushed and softened and soothed.

Jon will know. Basira will accept. And she will rest and love the blood, no longer.

_______________________________________________

“Jon?”

They’re back in the bedroom.

Of course they are.

It’s all they have left, their last stand, their only haunt that isn’t each other, and Martin is so _tired_ of the spectral weight of everything unsaid between them.

So… so maybe if he shares this, Jon will share with him, too, will reveal the revelations he refuses to divulge of Freya and whatever it is she means for him and Daisy.

Jon looks at him. From the other side of the bed, from the window, where he’s taken up his vigil, again. Freya is still downstairs (what else do they do with her?) and now there’s the sound of the generator kicking on, the pipes groaning, the mimicry of a home but all Martin knows is that which lies in another’s heart for him. And what could still lay within him, yet. What could possibly solve this?

He doesn’t wait, can’t or it’ll never get said.

“What if I gave you my eyes.”

How befitting, Martin thinks, how slowly Jon blinks.

“That’s what I wanted to say. What I realized the o-other night.”

Keeps blinking.

“Because if you need them to - to live, I mean - I’m not - the Eye _had_ me, right? Maybe not as strong as you or - or Magnus, but I’m _something_ , right? I can help you like this, Jon. I - I think I found a way to _fix_ this.”

_Morose code_ , provides his mind stupidly, as Jon’s eye flutters, and even his bandages give a slight twitch.

Then, “Come here. Martin, please.”

And not even the Web, herself, could hold Martin hostage. He’s crossed the room in seconds, in quick, shaking strides, till he’s tumbling into Jon’s arms and kissing him breathless. 

“I m’unno how,” he says between the meeting of their lips and the hiccups Jon’s giving. He’s giving. Both are giving giving giving to each other all over again, like it’s all new and poignant, and it _is_ simply because it is them.

“Martin,” Jon’s saying, and Martin knows, distantly, that he’s neither denied nor accepted the offer, but surely this is not a refusal. There’s got to be some universal constant about offering-your-eyes-to-your-love-and-ah-well-seems-you’re-kissing-again-so-it-must-be-an-all-clear.

Which is about as helpful as Martin’s mind is going to be in this matter, so he grounds himself in the here and now of Jon and the sheer bliss of unburdening what he hadn’t even realized was a near impossible weight upon his person.

“M’here,” he says, just to confirm it, for his own sake just as much as Jon’s.

“I know,” Jon says, his cheek damp as Martin nuzzles against it, his mouth yielding and warm when Martin returns there, too. 

And stays there, for a long and lovely time, as his admission reverberates around the room. A heavy buzz of truth, a shroud of inevitable difficulty. And a bliss of hope and devotion.

It’s… tiresome, their lives relegated to these apparent scenes of epiphany and stagnation and terror and acceptance, cyclical and ceaseless and _exhausting_. Martin hopes - and might even pray were he so inclined - that this is the final chink in the chain, that he’s severed the last, straggling link, and they can tumble into the detritus together and remake the whole better, stronger. More durable. And lasting.

That he can make Jon safe and new and unseen. That he can take Jon’s fate once and for all and bury it until the sky pulls apart again, and when it comes back together, there will be only the sun and moon and stars, the eyes hushed, kissed closed, and soothed.

Yes, he thinks he can do that. He thinks he can make it so. And blindness is of no consequence to him, not in the grandeur of _Jon_ and _saving Jon_. He’s tired of the world, anyway, has seen enough of it to supplement the lifetime he and Jon have left. 

And what a gift it will be, to give Jon something uncompromised by the Watcher and its cruelties, its indifference and its appetite. Its apathy. For Jon has never been an uncaring man, but now he won’t have to feel as though he’s making a statement of his choices, his braveries and interventions and, yes, sometimes his stupidity and selfishness, his atonement for things that were never his to control. Martin can take it all away, and give back the clarity, the bliss of freedom. He’ll have to wait for Jon to arrive at this, of course; he is a stubborn man, no matter the worst or best of it. But Martin trusts he’ll find the decision amenable, and perfect, and safe. And they’ll begin the world, anew, together.

And so very, far away, where a weeping fog and watchful cloud cover meet in secret atop a lone hill, such events are already underway. A confluence of two things not made for each other, and who make it so, anyway. An imperfect mooring. Strife and reconciliation.

And when the mist thickens, another eye blinks shut, forever.

_______________________________________________

  
  


Of course, Jon does not reveal just how shocked to his core Martin’s proposal has left him. Does not divulge of the serrated laugh that peeled out between his ears, smug and derisive and _my my, what a devoted little pet you have._

That was all Magnus said, because that was all that was needed, and it’s a miracle Martin doesn’t notice how Jon struggles to quell the bile that rises to his bandages. Or perhaps, he’s simply too blinded by the revelation of his own relief. Jon knows the look of it well: the glee of a martyr.

Save Martin’s is so genuine it _hurts_. It’s nothing like Jon’s wounds, how woefully he wears them, how eagerly he accepts them. Martin bleeds from his crow’s feet; his smile, a crown of thorns, himself tangled in the ensnaring hope of his impossible offer.

And Jon did not say yes. And he did not say no. Because Martin exists in a world of inference - sort of has to if he’s to keep up with Jon’s approach to intimacy - so Jon is willing to let him believe what he likes, because he also knows Martin hasn’t bound himself to this fully, yet. It’s a suggestion, as it stands, nothing more until one of them makes it so. And neither will without the other’s consent. And Jon certainly is not in the head space to dissect this. 

So that’s all it is. It’s only an offer. A suggestion. A - a… 

“C’n’t br’the,” he mumbles into Martin’s shoulder, where it’s crushed against his face, Jon finding himself the victim of a rather smothering embrace, even by Martin’s standards.

“Oh! Sorry,” Martin eases back, but still holds Jon by the shoulders, then works his hands up, across his clavicle, following the column of his neck, till he’s soothing the clenched-teeth ache from Jon’s jaw with a careful, circular pressure from his thumbs.

It’s… lovely. Everything with Martin is always so _lovely_ , that Jon’s half tempted to just say “Well, alright,” and be done with it, if it means they can keep being lovely together and he doesn’t have to think about Magnus or the Eye or his own mortality resting on the brink of Martin mutilating himself.

And there’s still Basira and Freya and - _Christ_ \- Daisy.

No time. No time to be lovely. There’s so much to always do, and he has to accomplish one of these Sisyphean tasks, else the bulwark’s going to buckle, and he’s going to collapse into a singularity of _everything-all-too-much_. The ocean let loose all over again.

The Eye. Magnus. Basira. Martin. Daisy. Freya.

The latter calls to him the strongest, the most discordantly sonorous, a lofty note of intrigue that promises the least repercussions. They did just… leave her in the kitchen, didn’t they. And Jon would like to think Magnus is too busy stewing over Martin’s little sedition to pose a threat to the poor girl. Jon _aches_ to know the extent of her devotion, how the Eye has made her its acolyte. And he wants to help her. He wants to know, and he wants to help.

Funny, that. _Lovely_ , actually. Because it’s not what the Eye would ever want, and it’s not the entirety of what Magnus wants.

It’s his own decision, and he’s going to make the most of it.

And Martin will support his any endeavor. Just as well, Jon’s not keen to leave him to whatever devices he’s meddling with. He doesn’t suspect Martin’s going to up and blind himself the moment he steps out of the room, but he’s dizzy from the onslaught of Daisy being back and _Another_ , _Watchful_ just doddering about the kitchen, and then this and that and all and none. He needs to compartmentalize, and Martin is more than welcome to be a part of that. Or Jon will drag him along. He’s fine with either, really.

Thankfully, Martin doesn’t protest as Jon opens his mouth, closes it, and then finds the words to summate “Ah… yes, so, thank you for the offer, dearest, I’ll need some time to figure this out, meanwhile I’m going to see to the child that’s just sitting in our kitchen and maybe try to help her, first, yeah?”

Which equates to an approximation of, “Um… Freya.”

And though Martin’s face falls, it picks right back up at the corners of his eyes, stemming the invisible flow of disappointment.

“Yeah,” he says. “F’course. Yeah let’s… let’s go - _jeez_ , Daisy really did just drag a kid into this, huh?”

Jon laughs at that. Can’t help it. Won’t, either.

“I’d pegged you more the maternal type,” he says, hoping to mask the crushing dread of what Daisy’s done, and what she still expects.

“Oi,” Martin shoulders him, in so doing, directing them for the door.

“Only you’re a bit of a hen,” Jon continues.

Levity is, oddly enough, easier. Probably because it’s so thoroughly a lie. In any case, he steadily ignores how heavy his feet feel, dragging him across the room, and he lets Martin do most of the steering, anyway. And the talking, as they descend the stairs again again _again_ , to see that, for all the house presents something new and awful and strange every time they come back to it, nothing’s changed this time. Freya’s still sat on the floor, her head wrapped like an especially macabre gift, tantalizing and horrific to Jon’s palette, and his eye itches to untangle her. 

But she’s just a child. Just a goddamn _kid_.

There is something else, though, there’s steam leaking from the bathroom door. Which means they’re going to have to see Daisy and Basira again if they stay downstairs, and Jon is determined to. Something twigs that Freya does not do well when left alone, that she’s been more than just a supplicant to the Eye’s will. It’s something he recognizes in Martin on a few, awful occasions. Something he tasted, acrid and fizzy, in the town when Magnus sought to _know_. 

He’s careful not to assume anything, though, because that always gets him too excited, too giddy at the promise of a good horror. Too eager to disregard basic etiquette. To keen to _rip_ -

He clears his throat, and in the silence, it’s a percussive sound that startles Martin. It draws no such response from Freya, though. She just lifts her head, again, and looks out from eyes not-seen. Eyes that, Jon knows, are parched for anything. Eyes that aren’t even that at all.

He wonders what he might give her…

In the end, it’s just his hand, as he approaches her slowly, so slowly, with Martin in tow behind him.

“Freya?” He ventures this as carefully as he can, struggling to keep each syllable only that. Just a sound. No ulterior motive. No compulsion.

As he nears, he passively catalogs more about her. How stocky she is despite her obvious malnourishment. The discolored knots of skin on her knees from so many scrapes and bruises she’s acquired, trophies of her youngest years. Errant strands of curly, fire orange hair spring out in wispy tufts where her bandages are the most tattered. There are no holes cut out for her nose or mouth, or indeed any indication of these features… at all, a dilemma that makes Jon’s stomach twist. 

_White_ , taunts the tiger, and Jon sends a barrage of, _Fuck off_ , right back at it. He doesn’t want to _know_. Freya will tell him, or she won’t.

_She will._

“We can help you,” he says, his voice remarkably steady, though most of his nerves translate into squeezing the life out of Martin’s hand.

“You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you,” Martin echoes, and squeezes Jon back.

They’re both in the process of crouching down, and so focused on the girl who refuses to be known, that neither of them notice the water pipes are no longer groaning, and the steam’s stopped billowing.

And Daisy, skin scoured pink, her hair a tousled wet mess, emerges from the bathroom, leaning heavily on Basira.

They stop dead in their tracks, as first Martin and then Jon turn around, pinning them like cork-board specimens, limp and helpless.

“Jon,” Daisy croaks, and Jon flinches as Basira does the same.

The moment is electric. The moment is palpable. 

The moment is… gone. Tired of itself, of all its grandiose anxiety, and Daisy shrugs out of Basira’s grasp and wobbles over. Jon’s on his feet in an instant, catching her in his arms, shocked at the innateness of the embrace they find themselves sighing into.

Has he… actually hugged Daisy? Since he woke up? Since she came back? Since they’ve both decided to - to -

It doesn’t matter. They’re hugging now. And she feels so good, so frail and protected, not the wild thing Jon’s learned to cherish anyway, or the nails and teeth, the bone-scraps and rage. Calculated, yes, but vengeful and definite. Daisy is that, no longer. There’s uncertainty to her, now, awful and irreparable, but complete. And Jon holds her all that much harder, so her pieces stay like that, keeping her whole until she’s ready to break. 

And she wants him to help her. She’s given her fate to his hands. 

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

“Me, too,” she says back, with no indication of who she means.

Jon hopes it isn’t him. She deserves her _self_. 

Then - because there aren’t enough curve-balls, apparently - she murmurs into his hair, “You wanna meet her, first? Think you should.”

That’s the problem with the Eye, anymore. It takes all the fun, all the stake out of guessing. But even Jon doesn’t need _It_ to tell him who she’s referring to.

He swallows, his throat a vice, his eye aflame, _his_ eye stubbornly - _smugly_ \- indifferent.

He can’t not reply. He can’t not _know_.

“Does… she want that?” He breathes more than says this, but Daisy hears him, and nods.

“We’re tired, Jon,” she pulls away and gives him a steady stare. The shadows stamped beneath her eyes - nightshade vicious - paint her all the more desperate. Devoted.

“I’ll… do what I can,” Jon manages.

“I know,” says Daisy, and together, they heel to their knees in front of Freya.

At some point, Martin’s shifted aside, and Basira’s made a move, too, but whatever point it had is rendered irrelevant as Freya suddenly reaches out and places one hand in each of Jon and Daisy’s, letting them cup her small, scabbed fingers between their equally roughened palms.

“Freya,” Daisy says, her voice gravel.

“Please,” offers Jon.

And Freya can’t just look, anymore. For there are two who understand the things that torment her, and she can’t see them both without ignoring the other, and that is impossible in this situation. Is wrong and terrible. She has to tell.

It’s not a spoken thing, she offers, and though the intent was for _all_ of them to understand, Jon finds himself forgetting that as her statement assaults his mind’s eye, poignant and knife-precise; far, far too distinct to be anything she’s giving voluntarily.

_Such a lonely little girl. A hider who sought in secret. Friendship, at first. A step father’s softer hand. Less tears for her brother. A useless child. Best left in the shadows. Where she can be nothing and do nothing and see all._

Wait he’s… he’s seen this before. At the clock tower… 

_She’d snuck out of the house at 5 a.m. urged by some unseen foresight. Helpless to the thrall, she’d wandered so far into the hills, she heard none of the screams when they started. All was quiet and cold and green and mirror-grey under the eyes that followed her trail. The death and sadness did not find her there. They weren’t allowed._

_Just as well, she did not see the fog that swallowed her home town until she found herself able to turn around again, and go back. By then, it was empty, and all were gathered in the square. Vapor and desolate._

_There was one last person remaining amidst the spectres. Her brother. He clung to the clock face, petrified and alone._

_She could not run for him; she’d never been fast. She could not break his fall; strong as her classmates bullied her for. She could only watch him court gravity, and then the cobblestones. Reduced to splatter and bone. She’d always been good at watching._

_And so, she closed her eyes._

And, just like that, Jon knows she hasn’t opened them, since. That the Eye was merciful only insofar as to give her enough clarity to wander back to the hills, and there it left her. An ultimatum. Witness or perish. All she had in the world was gone, so her choice was simple. So young and so profound.

Until the Huntress sought her, carried her like her mother might have, and did not look beneath the rags around her wounds.

And now she is here. Alone and afraid and unwanting of her world, anymore.

And Jon _knows_ this all. Every detail of her short, scared life, now a feast laid before him. There’s so much. So many ways to supplement what led her here. The cruel classmates. The distant mother. The brother she could never protect enough enough _enough_. How she decided to let the world just be, just to see what it might do. Because if she watched hard enough, she might figure out how to stop it. 

And so… what becomes of one so terribly observant, so voraciously vigilant, when there’s nothing worth watching?

Abruptly, Jon’s hands are no longer around hers. Are moving, charting their conclusive course, to the rags around her face. Are pulling them. So gently, so kindly, despite the gasps and screams that respond around him, as other hands descend and attempt to thwart his diligence. They don’t matter. They’re so _weak_. He is stronger.

He is _starving_.

And so is she. 

_Oh… Jon_ , like the moan of a lover, sighed as the rags fall away.

_Look_.

How could he not? It consumes his vision: all cream and off-white, with silver and blue swirls to envy even Jupiter’s most virulent storms. Gorgeous and _sick_ , puckered without an eyelid to nurture it. Sore but with no sclera to redden. And no tear duct to weep. 

Jon almost wonders what color the iris was, but he knows there never was one. He knows that when Freya Lockaby refused to see the world any longer, so, too, did this sprout from her face: a made and ready thing simply waiting to berate her, to inflict the last and final suffering.

How perfect. How _symbolic_. 

He stares at it, enrapt, uninterrupted by those who had tried to stop him. He knows they’re staring, too. And they’re all being stared back at, but it doesn’t matter. The cataract has swallowed Freya’s face whole. There’s nothing that she can see.

But he can see.

And so can _he_.

-

And once more, there is so - _fucking_ \- much.

They weren’t fast enough to stop Jon, all of them left reeling from the story supplanted into their minds. Well, Basira was almost successful, but Jon managed to subdue her, and before Martin could even think to react, he’d torn the bandages from Freya’s face. 

The _thing_ that stares out from behind them… 

Martin almost retches. Basira half-shrieks. Daisy quietly wails.

But Jon.

Jon _devours_ , pressing his face so close his nose almost touches the brutalized cornea that is poor Freya Lockaby’s face. 

“Stop!” Martin lunges, and, clamping a hand onto Jon’s shoulder, Martin hauls him backwards. 

Because there’s no doubt in his mind that it’s Magnus. 

Magnus who wants to know the agony of a little girl. 

Magnus who lifted Jon’s hands. 

Magnus who gripped the rags. 

Magnus who _looks_.

But when Martin sees Jon’s eye, it’s clear. Gleaming over with tears. Open and… serene. Nothing like the pitted void that has filled out his pupil each time Magnus had reared his head. No malicious glee. No roiling blue; Jon’s bandages are firm, no bulging twitching, no indication, at all, that Magnus has inspired any of this.

It’s just Jon.

Jon, who’s saying, “ _No no no no_ ,” over and over again, reaching for Freya sat placid as a mirror, reflecting a distorted image of Jon flailing for her, writhing in Martin’s grasp.

Jon who’s saying, “Martin, _please_ , no, please _please_.”

And then it’s Basira, her silhouette a blur of motion in Martin’s periphery, so quick he only registers the swift swing of her arm before the flat of her palm collides with brutal precision against Jon’s neck. It’s almost a hilarious cliche. But she’s had years on the force, and about as much combat training under her belt. There’s nothing feigned of this, and Jon spasms in Martin’s arms, his eyelid fluttering, limbs jerking, the fight quite literally punched out of him.

“Get him the fuck out of here,” Basira growls.

Martin obeys without question, dragging a half-conscious Jon for the stairs. It’s a wonder they make it to their room, all of Martin’s strength sapped and suffused with despair. With helpless confusion. With betrayal.

It can’t have been Jon. He wouldn’t _do_ that. He wouldn’t hurt a child, he wouldn’t tear out her statement. He wouldn’t do this to them.

He _wouldn’t_.

Except he has.

Until he’s coherent enough to explain himself, he _has_ , and Martin has to accept the fallout.

“Jon,” he whimpers. 

_What have you done?_

_______________________________________________

  
  


She… doesn’t understand. Any of it, but, first and foremost, where Jon’s gone. He was right there. He was _helping_ . She felt it. She _knew_ it. Jon was making sense of this, was guiding Freya through her statement, was almost _there_ the way Daisy needs him to be, needs him to demonstrate, needs everyone else to _see_. 

It was the final piece, to reveal Freya’s wounds, so they all could look, and Freya could know she was being seen only with mercy and care. There was closure to be made, to be celebrated, to be held dearly, sweetly, a lullaby for this poor child. 

And there’s none of it. Jon’s gone, and it’s just her, Freya, and Basira.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Basira is saying, but takes no further action, doesn’t try to sit or stand beside Daisy, or meddle with Freya.

Which Daisy appreciates. To an extent. A frayed and teeth-grinding thing of barely contained rage.

“What did you do,” Daisy rasps, staring just shy of Freya, unable to focus without Jon’s clarifying presence. 

A dull heat blooms at the back of her throat, at her wrists and ankles, strangling the pulse there, shackling it to an awfulness she hasn’t felt since she found Freya and brought her into this. It’s a less profound urge, perhaps, but one all the same. Familiar and goading, and insatiable unless Jon gets back down here right now and finishes this. _Proves_ what Daisy worked so hard to accomplish. Quiets it again, once and for all.

“I saved you,” Basira says bluntly, and Daisy very nearly scoffs.

“No, you didn’t.”

_Beat_.

“Do you know how much it hurts, Basira?” Daisy asks this despite the curl her tongue takes around each consonant, the desire for _rip rip rip_. 

“Do you know how tired I am?

“Do you even know what this meant for me? Or her?”

She gestures, haltingly, at Freya, afraid that too much momentum might bring out the claws; just as well, she’s still unable to look directly at the girl, the opaque glare of her eye sitting, ominous and cold, in the corner of Daisy’s own.

“And do _you_ know,” Basira replies, with venom in her teeth, “what he was doing to her?”

Daisy doesn’t answer that. Because that was the _point_ . And as much as Basira wants to paint it as the desperate acts of a ruthless monster, that is _not_ Jon. That is not what he _does_ . Not what he can _do_ . Regardless of Magnus, of the possibility he’s been feeding off other avatars - Helen, Oliver, the nameless Hunter - she knows Jon wouldn’t let him take a child. With the conviction of a hanged man, she _knows_.

And so -

“Does it hurt you to live, Basira?”

Basira blinks, but manages to retort, right on rhythm, “Every second.”

“And what would you do to make it stop?”

Silence.

_Beat. Beat. Beat_ . _Beat_.

Daisy winces with each one.

Flinches harder, still, when the breath Basira takes trembles.

“Would you die?”

_Beat. Beat_ . _Beat._

“No.

_Beat. Beat._

“Will you let me?”

_Beat_.

_Beat_.

_Beat_.

_Beat_.

“Will you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- child abuse/neglect  
> \- explicit eye horror
> 
> Titled modified from "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" by Arcade Fire


	6. buried hearts rest next to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this is still enjoyable, we're getting into the... denser, sadder end territory, and I would highly advise minding the CW's. As always, I love hearing back from you all <3
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

_White._

_White white._

_Whorl and wisp and thick drip teeth and white._

_Dolloped blue. Unfurling at the canines._

_New, isn’t it? This one. This time. This unplace. As he toes the ledge between stomach and heart. Plummet and soar._

_Above - when it exists - a discoloration: tiger’s eye brilliant. Below, the blue-gone-black._

_(If I let you have her, you will let Daisy go.)_

_Black goes bluer. Bruiser._

_(Oh, my Archive, how could I deny such deference? Really, it beseems you.)_

_Goes wicked. Purr and prim and poised._

_(Only I’d have adored you on your knees when I could properly enjoy you, but… well, I suppose this will do.)_

_The spider-crawl along his skin. The intangible nausea. It’s worth it._

_Is._

_Christ, it is._

_(You will?)_

_For how to believe in the cavern of yourself, the infection of your mortality? It’s still so far away, and he’s rising fast. Back to the making world._

_(Let’s see what you decide about our little Miss Lockaby, shall we? I’d hate having to break my word, Archive. They are so special for us, after all.)_

_And the rising takes root, toward the tiger’s eye sunrise, gold-gleam and tawny - that hollow corona of halo umber. A hallowed point. Fathoms further with each reaching finger and hand and arm and ey-_

Jon wakes with that word on his tongue: _us_.

Hears it even when he looks over at Martin burrowed in the blankets beside him, face twisted by a strenuous approximation of trying-to-sleep.

_His_ eye throbs, the bandages soaked with a cold and clammy dampness, and Jon tears them off, crying out softly as the gauze sticks and pulls loose a thick clump of lashes. He tries to be quiet, but it’s enough to disturb Martin who mumbles gently, at first, before the depleted and untroubled breathing too quickly finds momentum, his sleepy gaze meeting Jon’s.

“Martin,” Jon says his name; he can’t bear to hear his own. His that is _not_. His, that is sullied and riddled with doubt and confusion and terror and cowardice. 

“Are you -?” Begins Martin, and Jon sees his desperation, manifesting brittle black at the corners of his mouth as he grimaces.

Jon quickly dispels it.

“No.”

He’s no part of Magnus right now. Only himself. Huddled and scared and _tired_.

“What about -”

\- _before_. Jon does not let him finish. 

“I don’t know.”

To hide his fear, he worries at his lower lip, elsewise Martin might see how terribly his traitorous mouth is trembling.

“I don’t… I -”

But then Martin’s got a hold of him again - dammit - so much softer than he deserves, than he’ll ever be able to earn. 

So he has to give the truth. What he can. What can be managed between them until he can make his last and defining penance.

“I don’t think so, Martin, but - but I didn’t want to hurt her. Not like he does.”

Martin strokes his hair and breathes softly against his scalp, “I know, Jon.”

_And I know you know_ , _because you’re too good for me. And too naive. Too stupid to see that -_

He shudders in Martin’s arms and pulls away, breath coming fast and unsteady.

“Jon?”

_(You know he can’t save you.)_

“I have to finish this,” Jon says. Jon pleads. Jon _looks_ and begs Martin to see.

“I have to help her. I - and then - ”

His heart becomes his stomach. Descends into the bruised abyss, leaving him light headed enough to spit the unpromising words with relative, awful ease. For compromise. For _sake_.

“I’ll let you.”

“What?”

Jon almost wants to laugh. 

_Come on, Martin, we’re past that, now. We’re all just reading minds, anymore, you can’t expect me to speak the lies for what they are._

Save, he must. Because there is horrible, aching love in the pit of his dwindling soul, filling out the spaces Magnus has honeycombed through, and it swells and bursts and bleeds for Martin. Always. Always. Him.

And _him_.

“I’ll let you give your eyes, Martin.”

Holding Martin’s hands, Jon goes to his knees. A picture. A portrait. A whole landscape of desperation and devotion. Thunder blue and grave deep, dark, while Martin looks down from his thorny throne, his eyes lush with tears Jon knows he’ll never cry for himself.

_(Yes, my Archive. You know.)_

“Just let me do this,” he chokes out. “And I’ll let you.”

_Like_ **_he_ ** _didn’t let me. Like I was never given a choice. And I’m no better than him, love. There’s no choice, but I’ll let you think there is. It’s all I have for you, anymore, this ruse that I am._

There’s… poetry to it. Of course there is. There is never _not_ poetry when Martin’s involved. But where his flows freely of its own verse, Jon’s possesses a more succinct meter, a delicious irony. It recites in a cadence of petrichor and… aubergine, oddly enough, a nightshade with all the possibility of poison sans any of the effect. At the moment, anyway. For now, it’s just the uncanny tonal shift, the shell, the unfulfilled promises of his lies and their inimical existence when all he’s ever wanted is the truth. When it’s all he’s ever sought. And instead it’s always more mystery. That tempting mistress: the obfuscate. And still he pursues. Still he seeks.

Ha.

And to think he once considered Daisy another oddity.

_Yes._

Yes.

“Yes…”

He’s still got Martin’s hands in his. Is still knelt. Is still poetic. Though the world stumbles back into his shattered periphery, and he remembers where he is, and he recognizes his next goal. All with Martin’s blessing, of course.

“I - I love you, Jon,” Martin is saying.

“Thank you,” says Jon’s tongue before he can catch back up to it, as well.

And he wishes he felt stupid for it, wishes this wasn’t always so goddamn _profound_ , anymore, but Martin’s face belies no amusement. There’s only heather grey sincerity where the Lonely once scored its tendrils across his brow. And his hands are solid and warm as they gather Jon close all over again. Like they have an eternity to do so. Like there might never be a last time.

(But he knows.)

Ignorant to any of this, Martin’s thumbs chart an immediate course for Jon’s eye and _his_ eye, brushing tenderly over each closed lid. Kissing one. Tending the _other_.

Like soil. A wintered garden. But Jon’s fallow, isn’t he - fated to an ill-reaped reward of all that he allowed to lead him here. Because he didn’t try hard enough. And he’s out of time to try again.

But… it’s okay. If Martin believes that, then it is. So long as he keeps that for himself and stays strong, so, too, will Jon. Until he doesn’t have to, anymore, and he can close both eyes, and take that last embrace, a kiss, and find his own immeasurable peace.

_______________________________________________

  
  


Oddly enough, it’s Basira who has to stop Daisy from throwing herself at Jon as he and Martin return to the kitchen. 

They haven’t moved any further than the table; it hasn’t been long enough for the shock to settle, for them to slink back to their own room. Hell, it’s hardly been a half hour, by what little calculations Daisy’s been keeping. She mostly counts time by blood, anymore. But with _that_ dwindling away as each second brings Jon back to her, brings his promises _back_ , everything’s muddled. 

And now, all that matters is that Jon’s here, and Basira will see, and Freya will be okay. And then she will be okay, too. Finally finally _finally_.

“Jon.”

Daisy.

“Daisy.”

Jon.

And neither knows how it happens, but they’re embracing, each one such a relief to the other. One, a means of completion, the other, a means of revelation. And, hopefully, soon, another completion, as well. With her blessing. Of course. Jon will never again take what is not his.

Or _his_.

“Are you going to -?”

Daisy.

“Yes.”

Jon nods into her shoulder, careful not to angle his fresh bandages too hard against her harder bone, the atrophied muscle. She’s still so strong. And so trusting of him to take that final fight from her. 

“Basira,” he turns from Daisy, but Basira refuses to acknowledge him with more than a curt nod, a glower, and a half-menacing twitch of her upper lip.

“I promise,” Jon presses, anyway, as _he_ presses up into _his_ eye, eager as the vertigo that grabs you over the edge. “You’ll see, Basira.”

“I won’t let you take her,” Basira answers.

She’s stood nowhere near Freya.

“Think what you like, _Jon_. You may have her convinced, but I won’t let you. And I’ll kill you if you try. 

“But go on,” she makes a grand gesture toward Freya, a sweeping, sarcastic hand that arcs just shy of accidentally slapping the girl.

Jon ignores this. So does Daisy, who remains steadfastly by his side as he approaches Freya. Basira starts to say more, something with too much force to be genuine - something of the last-ditch variety as things fall into place around her, but… 

Jon’s already there, with Daisy beside him, and together they kneel in front of Freya, and once again, they gather her hands in theirs, like her mother might have were she still a factor in this, like her brother once did when they played and scraped and screamed together. 

And then a hand falls upon Jon’s shoulder, and he glances up to see Martin looking down, the sorry thick in his eyes and at his fingertips as he squeezes, as much to ground himself, Jon knows, as to steady him at all. 

“Are you sure?” Martin asks, because of course he does. He has to. That’s who he is. So inquisitive and careful and worried.

Jon cranes his neck at an awkward angle, feeling a bit silly for such a somber moment, but he manages just fine and kisses Martin’s knuckles. Just a dusting of lips, leaving a smile against the skin, though it pains him greatly to muster it.

“Yes.”

_(Yesss.)_

But Martin believes him. He always will. And it’s okay, because soon Jon won’t have to lie anymore.

“Basira?”

Martin.

And his hand upon Jon’s shoulder tightens, and he needn’t continue looking up to see the cold expression Martin wears. Just as well, Basira provides ample commentary so Jon needn’t endure the weight of her gaze, either. He clearly hears her scoff. 

“We’re all just fine with this, then, yeah?” She demands. “We’re just going to let him feed this kid to Magnus?”

_(Oh, how I’ve missed your Detective.)_

“No,” Daisy, with her conviction so proud and impregnable, her trust in Jon an iron thick thing, as much weighted by fact as the fiction she’s convinced herself about Jon.

_Scoff_.

Jon flinches at the sound this time, and Martin’s fingers turn to pin-prick-vices across his clavicle.

“He’s going to help her, Basira,” Daisy continues, and in an effort that stymies Jon as much as it probably infuriates Basira, she brings her right hand to curve against Jon’s where he’s holding Freya’s. With the meager span of her fingers, she holds them all, Jon and Freya, in both of her hands, pressing and containing and… cherishing.

“You’re going to help,” she murmurs.

And just like that, Jon’s gaze lifts to Freya’s singular, dessicated one.

And, again he sees her story, a bullet point list of rapid fire narrative. Her home, the hills, the loss, the decision. And then Daisy. And then… now. Here. A mirror facing itself, labyrinthine and ceaseless. Freya watching Jon watch her, knowing what he is, and what he means for her.

It’s… so much, so _much_ , to keep _him_ unknown.

_(You made no ultimatum for her, Archive.)_

_Fuck. Off._

It’s not… perfect. But it is merciful. And quiet. And still. With Daisy’s hands around his, and his around Freya’s, as her eye clears and she sees, and is seen. And her face becomes her own, again, the cataract shrinking into twin flecks of hazel nestled among freckles and cheeks slightly too chubby for someone so starved. She’s… so very dear and sweet and… promising. But this is all Jon can give her, until _he_ loses patience and takes what he’s owed. And the gaunt and pale steal Freya into an abrupt sallowness, her healed eyes going dull and glassy, her mouth twitching at the corners, her hands convulsing in his.

It’s still quiet, though. Still a mercy. 

But, still, it is a lie, and Jon’s heart retches as Freya finally goes limp, as her eyes flutter closed and she slumps forward, relieved of her burdens and at last able to rest. She is gone. She is safe. She is free. Another soul to ferry, though Terminus lacks any part in this, either. 

For it’s Jon who weathers the cost of it - all the fear coiled within him, sumptuous and _held_ by greedy hands that have caressed vellum tomes as eagerly as they’ve wielded metal pipes. That encircle his throat as keenly as they’ve ripped a child’s trauma from her very soul.

_(You’ve done so well. Jon.)_

_And Daisy?_

He’s too weak to find his pride.

The answering pause is deafening. Audacious and loathsome as Jon struggles not to take in reality just yet. His focus must remain on Magnus. The surge of _new_ and _complete_ and _a-story-told-and-taken-for-_ ** _us_ ** coursing through him. He must contain it, steady it, let it _drip drip drip_ into himself and _him_ , lest the force of it inspire some awful grandeur. Three times is enough. This will be the last.

For, with Helen, it was new and horrifying, and he took so much from her to sustain the aftermath of Magnus. 

With Oliver, it was a mistake, and it all went haywire.

With the nameless Hunter, it was… on purpose. He was starving; _he_ was goading.

With this. He is helping. So many, and least of all, himself. He gives it all to Magnus: the story, the supplement, to prove his loyalty. To bolster his lie. So that, when it comes time to save Daisy from the uncertain world he’s made, Magnus will have no part in her, will taste none of what makes her seek retribution.

And when it comes time for him to do the same, he can offer Martin as much honesty, and as much closure as they both deserve. And the world will be set to rights, and everyone will be safe.

_(My perfect Archive…)_

It’s all the answer Jon needs.

_______________________________________________

They bury Freya within the hour.

Well, they make the effort to, anyway. Ultimately, it takes Basira and Martin two and a half to dig the grave from a divot already dashed into the cold earth of the back garden, a task done in complete silence, Basira emanating a calculated fury Martin counters with such relief and sadness rolling off of him in waves, that it almost invites a thick breeze of fog their way.

But Daisy and Jon - holding each other as they hold the body of Freya Lockaby wrapped in a duvet - keep the worst at bay.

Well. Technically speaking, Daisy does.

She’s all but beaming at the prospect of _soon, soon_ , and Jon huddles in the cast shadow of her unsettling optimism as he struggles to hold within himself the impossible _depths_ Freya’s story has dredged up.

But just as eagerly as he flexes his metaphysical fingers, so too is Magnus celebratorily drunk off the ecstasy of the misery and torment visited upon so young a life. He’s too distracted to notice the small sedition forming in the darkest corner of Jon’s mind. Too elated to consider how his precious _Archive_ could possibly deny him anymore. 

So Jon let’s him believe it. He took that page from Martin in the panopticon when it came to light how he’d played Peter at the long con. Jon hasn’t had nearly as much time to formulate a ruse, and has even less now, given that things are only starting to stitch together into a coherent plan, but with this success, he tentatively foresees another. And Daisy’s still beside him, is still so certain about him… 

“Okay,” Martin hauls himself out of the grave - Basira stopped digging half an hour ago, the hole growing too deep for her - and for a moment, Jon thinks of nothing else beyond the body in his arms and the daunting task of its burial.

He’s so engrossed in the hypothetical of putting Freya Lockaby in the earth, he doesn’t notice Basira is taking her out of his hands until she’s… just not there anymore.

He looks at Basira.

She looks at Daisy.

Martin considers them all, catching his breath by the graveside.

Above, only two eyes observe their performances, but they’re barely cracked open, so they go mostly ignored.

“Let me,” Basira says, the fight gone out of her face, her voice.

So Jon does. And he watches, but from far enough away that he doesn’t see Freya’s body when it _thumps_ carefully into the earth. Daisy doesn’t seek anymore of her, either, not out of guilt or indifference - no - they’ve both just done what they could, and Freya does not need them anymore. She’s resting. She has played her part.

Her own task complete, Basira returns from the grave, sets her sights on Daisy, and wordlessly takes her arm. She doesn’t pull, or try to lead, or initiate anything that isn’t reciprocated by Daisy. Which is good, because Daisy doesn’t immediately comply, and Jon glimpses the nigh tangible tension that stretches between the two of them before Daisy relents and gives them both some slack, letting Basira lead her back into the house.

And once more, it’s just him and Martin. And Magnus. And the eyes. 

“Did you mean it,” Martin asks.

_Which transgression,_ Jon wants to laugh, wants to cry. _Did I mean to start this? To kill so many innocent people? To make you choose me over safety and sanity? To make Daisy choose her own death? And Basira? To take the life of a child and feed it to the parasite in me?_

“Because I will, Jon,” Martin continues.

He’s still stood by the graveside, where Jon cannot bring himself to be. He can’t see Freya again. He doesn’t know what will happen, and that’s good, so he just… stays. And puzzles over what Martin’s said.

Until it clicks, a half second later, and he’s sent reeling all over again.

“Oh.”

A dense, dreadful _watching_ opens from above and pours down, bleeding from a fount of cracked clouds, their feeble masonry unable to stem the tides each iris contains, threatening to drown Jon all over again.

_You know,_ Magnus had said, when Jon made his excuses to placate Martin. 

He does.

Knows that, despite what fairy tales have lauded, comparative to the raw and gleeful power of a madman’s triumph, this will not save him. He can never supplant Magnus’s thrall with Martin’s, no matter how much they love each other, no matter what metaphors they insist to the uncaring world, to each other. To themselves.

Still, he has some agency left in this. He can choose how. And when. And why. And how viciously he will miss everything. And how he will thrive until then.

It’s not immediate. It’s only… eventual. He can wait. They both can, together.

Because he is not Daisy. Much as she might believe she’s free, she merely displaced her pursuit with another: seeking only her own end. 

Yes, there are yet several dozen more parts to complete before any such drastic measures need to be taken. Freya was one, and she has been laid to rest. And that is so very good. And there is still so much more to do. And that is also very good. 

_Yes_.

It doesn’t need to be spoken aloud for Martin to understand. Jon’s afraid if he does, he’ll shatter the facade further. Because without words, Martin can believe whatever he likes of them. So he does. And he leaves the graveside, and returns to Jon’s. Always so loyal. Always when it’s least his own fault.

“Go inside, love,” Martin brushes his lips to Jon’s cheek. “Make us some tea. It’s - it’s almost over, yeah?”

Jon breathes, daring to let the knot in his chest loosen.

“Yeah.”

And for a moment, a splintered second of bliss, he almost believes himself.

_______________________________________________

And again, nothing, as that strange sort of routine from before settles over the house once more. 

It’s of a particular vehemence this time around, though. There’s something about a child’s death, regardless of the parameters, that sobers everything else - relegates every other woe to a lesser degree of itself. At least in terms of the group dynamic. 

Individually - Basira, Martin, Jon, Daisy - they all suffer under duress of their respective torments. But it’s isolated, only occasionally surfacing between two parties, though never mingling; like blood and ice. 

Jon does not approach Daisy, and Basira snubs him every second they’re forced together. Usually, it’s in the kitchen where Martin has him take a daily dose of tea and toast. Which is when he and Basira decidedly avoid each other. And Daisy never had any qualms with Martin to begin with, so there’s no point instigating something, now.

In pairs, though, things are a tad more… strenuous. Because nothing is being discussed. No one addresses the obvious. And in such close quarters with so much looming large in the very near future, nerves strum like piano wire, fickle and ill tuned. A discordant clash is inevitable, but no one wants to be the hand to stray the melody of their melancholy.

And then Jon starts dreaming again.

Subtly, at first. Magnus has taken to reclining smugly in the recesses of his grey matter. But two nights after they bury Frey Lockaby, with two accompanying days languishing in their own ineffectuality, he uncoils into Jon’s subconscious with a message. A warning. A threat. And a promise that never needed to be spoken aloud. But, well, the bastard just loves a good salt flay upon the wound.

The worst of it is the clarity in which Jon finds himself ensnared. Bound on his knees - just like _he’d_ wanted - and staring up at the full manifestation of Jonah Magnus.

Not Wright, from the portrait Jon had seen looming amidst the Institute’s memorial displays. Not Elias, with that stupid cowlick sitting oh so perfectly coiffed no matter the corpses he’d just piled at Jon’s feet. 

No. 

It’s Magnus. 

Severe and proud and _sharp_ . From the cut of his jaw, to the immaculate smile stretching from canine to canine, his gaze bearing down on Jon with eyes as empty as each of Jon’s promises. To _him_. To Martin. To himself.

“My most precious construction,” Magnus says, his words cascading along a low and throaty timbre that wrenches shivers from the pit of Jon’s stomach. “Don’t you agree, Archive?”

Jon opens his mouth to spit a violent retort, curses and threats and recriminations, but finds himself gagging on nothing, his tongue hampered by an intangible weight.

Magnus tuts, and strides closer, filling Jon’s singular point of vision with only _him_. 

“I thought you would be grateful by now,” he says, cocking his head playfully. “I thought you might have seen all that we had accomplished and finally learned to appreciate everything I have done for you.”

Jon thrashes against his invisible bonds, and the momentum almost sends him toppling sideways, but Magnus becomes a blur of motion, and Jon finds himself steadied, by hands too real to ignore, and a grin too lecherous to deny. It makes his whole body feel overcome with dizziness, with a saccharine _need_ for fulfillment and praise and - and -

Magnus chuckles, soft and fond. Conspiratorial. _Knowing_.

“Oh, Jon,” he purrs, moving in, bearing down, so that the next words he speaks fill Jon’s heavy mouth with succor and promise and _fear_.

“He’s so dear, isn’t he? Your Martin. Such a shame he’s not important enough, though. Perhaps if you had better prepared him - but you were such a difficult man, weren’t you?”

Jon trembles, his body alive in this nightmare despite its incorporeality. And still Magnus elocutes.

“I wonder… had you known - about any of this, I mean - do you think you would have made better use of him?”

This, punctuated with two, precise points of touch. One: Magnus’s finger beneath his chin. The other: his hand curling around Jon’s knee, pushing his leg aside to fit his own between them.

“I don’t think you would have,” he continues, staring down Jon, his eyes starless - voids to rival even the Dark’s altar.

“I think,” Magnus _smiles_ , “that you would have followed the same path. 

“I _think_ , my precious Archive, that you were too delighted by your own hunger and the things you had yet to haunt. And look what you have accomplished! The end of the world is ours, and you can share it with them all.”

He’s so close. Enough to - to… 

“But you won’t,” Magnus breathes, as he fills Jon’s mouth with tongue and teeth and the cloying nectar of his compulsion. “You’re too selfish. Too _perfect_ to waste your time on such menial happenstances.”

And he keeps moving, inexorably closer, in and in and in, forcing Jon to take him, to accept him, to feel _him_.

“They will die, my Archive, and we will not. And nothing they do can forestall your apogee.”

_Nothing_ , thinks Jon, numbly.

And he’s in his mind, isn’t he? So the thought is not only his own; it casts out in the non-space of their charade, percussive and reverberant, and the smile Magnus gives as he pulls away… Christ, Jon might call it whimsical were he not so thoroughly repulsed.

“I am so proud of you,” Magnus says. But he’s already said that, hasn’t he? Maybe. It’s so hard to remember…

Regardless, it holds no sincerity, only selfish, savage desire as he picks Jon apart to his bones with each false praise, till he’s nothing but the scaffolding of himself, and then only an eye and an ear with which to behold Magnus.

“We will do such incredible things, my Archive.”

He’s no longer there, Magnus, as the man he was. He’s pulling apart, unraveling at the seams, his sinew and smile curling and reeling, round and round themselves, unspooling, and then coiling back _tighter_. An ouroboros of magnetic tape.

“Now…”

It retakes its shape, the watcher, the listener, the leftovers of Magnus: massive and split open like a geode, resplendently awful. Frostbite blue. And it all ascends to the once-again-tawny heavens, marring the simplicity, infecting into the hazel-sweet contrition of Jon’s last resort.

And again: _Now._

Beat. Beat. Blink.

_Open. Our. Eyes._

_______________________________________________

Daisy dreams, too. 

There is no malice for her, not exactly, nothing worse than what she’s forced upon others, but with this guilt, her resolve only grows, and so, too, do the dreams become less kind. 

They all feature one constant, though. She is always searching. Looking seeking _hunting_ out a little girl whose hand she fails to find each time. When they’re running through the hills, one after the other. When they’re lost together in a sea of spectral mourners. When Jon is there, pulling her away, leaving Daisy so terribly alone, screaming and sobbing. 

And then - sans preamble - that second night, she just… finds it. Has Freya’s hand in her grasp, and then the whole of her, held safe and close, her body cold against the scalding heat of Daisy’s blood. 

_It hurts_ , Freya whimpers.

Daisy lets her go, forgiveness spilling up her throat, but Freya shakes her head, faster and faster until her skin flings off, hair and muscle and cartilage flying to and fro, and when she stops, only her eyes remain, bulging from her skull, wider and wider, till they eclipse bone and engulf her again in stormy milk-blue, white, and grey. Her blindness completed, and staring.

_No,_ Freya finds Daisy’s hand this time, her fingers crawling through with soil that she spills between each of Daisy’s knuckles with such helpless affection.

_Not you_ , she says, still shaking her… eye, slowly, slower. And then stops.

_It hurts,_ she croaks.

_But -_

And then, Daisy wakes up. There’s no proper morning yet, only a thin trickle of silver through the window, limping across the bedspread, falling just short of the cold sweat on her brow and beneath her eyes. 

She lays there, motionless, so as not to disturb Basira who she’s not even sure sleeps at all anymore. Mostly they do this for the pantomime, the mimicry of life and its simple constants. She doesn’t know what time it is. Not that it matters. It would be nice, though, would give her a deadline to work through her swirling thoughts.

It doesn’t matter.

Because, when the light finally breaks - not much difference there, really, only it’s slightly less anemic - she knows exactly what she must do.

_______________________________________________

Martin doesn’t dream. 

He doesn’t sleep, either, so there’s no chance of encountering the nightmares he knows are waiting for him. Of course, his body eventually gains an upper hand some 50-and-a-bit hours after he’s packed the last shovelful of dirt atop Freya Lockaby’s body, and he finds himself tumbling, tumbling, into a fitful doze as Jon whimpers beside him in their bed. He’s taken to wrapping himself bodily around Jon these last few nights, because Jon won’t tell him what he sees behind closed eyes, and Martin refuses to make accusations. As exhaustion steals him away, though, he’s unable to even shift on his side or reach out for Jon, leaving a cavernous distance between them as his eyes flutter heavily shut, and his sore limbs twitch into slumberous submission

He’s sat atop a hill. Though to call it so anywhere beyond the realms of the dreaming world would be incorrect. It’s far too high to be a hill, is the only bit of land that rises for miles and miles around him, such that it’s broken the clouds, but, for the sake of many things Martin doesn’t yet understand, it is, simply, a hill. 

And he’s there. 

And it’s cold, the grass beneath him bent with age and an unforeseen winter.

And above him the sky looms, clear and stark, inlaid with wispy blue cirrus clouds he doesn’t think to question the presence of. 

And. 

He is alone.

And, as it does so it dreams, time does not so much pass as… that. Does. Do. Exists. Insofar as Martin cares about it. This isn’t a place for that, though, for caring. Or worrying. Or thriving, or stagnating.

It’s simply an _is_ place, a cheap interim for him to inhabit until such time as he doesn’t need to be, and then he won’t. He’s not sure how he’ll get there, exactly, without time cooperating, but he also… doesn’t really care.

Because it… _is_ here. Not nice. Not awful. The cold sucks a bit, but he’s got a decent jumper on, so kudos there, dream brain. It’s just… 

_oh_

Oh.

He’s… he’s been here before. Twice. Each _time_ completely distinct from each other, but they’ve made themselves manifest, together, and he didn’t even bloody notice. And he’s been _here_.

Abruptly, the hill _is_ a hill, and he can see through the clouds to the ground below, so close it could almost be the sea rising. And it’s not cloud cover at all. Just fog. Just _fucking_ fog, again, rising faster, churning upward in great, gulping heaves. Breathing. Choking. 

He looks up. Because there’s nothing save doom below.

And the sky’s coming apart, red and bloodshot at a million thready links, all of them converging on a single locus amidst the blue-matter, coiling together in a point of absolute blackness. That grows and grows, and almost makes Martin think, helplessly, of Oliver Banks. 

But it keeps growing, defying its own construction and the ley lines that feed into it. 

Fractal. But not. 

He thinks of Helen. 

The Hunter? Maybe? Is there anything here for them?

_No no no no no_.

Because it’s not the sky.

And the great iris roils at _him_ , furious and open with such awesome, brutal malice. Stares him down atop his single hill. As the pupil grows cancerous inside, bubbling out and _ripping_ , spilling the blue to black. Starless. Devoid. _Unseeing._

He… doesn’t sleep much, anymore. Dreams even less. So he’s out of practice with waking up, with jolting and gasping and containing those outbursts for Jon’s sake.

This, however, warrants no such response.

He just wakes up. His eyes are no longer closed. And his pulse is calm.

He’s awake.

Because he has his answers. 

_He’s awake._

And, given time, he will understand them.  
  


_______________________________________________

And… Basira. 

Who dreams without sleeping as she lets exhaustion dictate her emotional state, careening her towards something remarkably like mania, but it’s _so_ much better than everything else, so who the hell cares? 

She relishes it. Almost as much as she does Daisy. Which is why she pretends for her. Why she lays down in the bed each night, their bodies stiff and unnatural to each other, but the bed doesn’t understand this and remains soft and plush and comfortable, such that Basira’s forced to indulge a half hazy unconsciousness which veers dangerously close to actual sleep. And she won’t have that. And she won’t let her guard down. And she won’t lose Daisy. 

Not yet.

Because she’s come just as precariously close to understanding _that_ , too. And she can’t. She just can’t.

Can’t accept the fate she saw of Freya Lockaby. Can’t live in a world without Daisy. 

She doesn’t care that it didn’t hurt, that Freya went peacefully, that Daisy can go the same. She doesn’t care that Jon has exerted whatever kind of control over Magnus. There’s nothing _there_ for her. Everything resides within Daisy, with hands that grip and break, and eyes that flash and snarl, with the mouth that kisses so severely. That beautiful, aching mind so full of ambition. 

In her fretful, waking hours, Basira’s heart, her thoughts, are ironclad. And she wanders around the house, doing pointless tasks to fill the space between when she can next fuss over Daisy without it being terribly obvious, as well without her attention warranting any discussion more arduous than: “Have you eaten today?” “Let me wash your hair.” “Let’s get some fresh air, just for a minute.”

It’s fine. It’s working. They’re alive, aren’t they? It’s all just fan-fucking-tastic.

Until it’s night, and there’s nothing to distract Basira from herself, and she must grapple tooth and nail with the grinding abattoir of her mind as it churns out chunks of guilt and hate and regret and fear and sadness and - and - and -

Over and over. Till the sky blinks morning, and - well… over and over, isn’t it?

Save tonight, she’s not careful enough. Because she can’t settle her mind past itself. Its threadbare constitution has gotten itself all bloody snared on a scene from today, when she’d coaxed Daisy into the kitchen for a mid-afternoon tea. There had been a moment by the kitchen sink, as Basira filled the kettle and Daisy leaned on the counter beside her, when everything just sort of… unwound. Relaxed, almost. And Daisy had closed her eyes, and when Basira glanced from the corner of her eye, she saw that a small, soft smile had usurped the perpetual thinness of Daisy’s mouth, filling it out with a rare look of contentment

“I always wanted to learn how to crochet,” Daisy murmured, and Basira had nearly dropped the kettle from the force of the non sequitur.

“My nan tried to teach me,” Daisy continued. “I remember it was because she was making curtains, and I always thought it would be so nice to make some, too. 

“It was called crocodile tear - the stitch, I mean - that she was using. And, I thought that was the greatest thing I’d ever heard, you know? Just these gorgeous kind of droopy ovals she’d hook in seconds. Lovely wool, too, seafoam green with a bit of something shiny twisted in. I asked her how it did that, the wool - something about ply this or that or whatever, I don’t know. I think the technicalities put me off a bit, it was easier to just watch, anyway. 

“She hung them in her kitchen window when she was done - it was small, so it wasn’t a huge project, and she had really bad arthritis by then. 

“I called it the crocodile kitchen after that - always made her laugh.”

She turned to Basira, who only then realized tears had sprung to her own eyes.

“Did I ever tell you that?”

And how could Basira answer? For all the time they’ve known each other, for all the awful things they’ve seen together, for all the time wasted _not_ loving her, how could Basira now tell her: _No, no you never did. And if I let you go, then I’ll never know anything else. And you’ll never get to hang curtains in our kitchen or share anecdotes over tea. Don’t you want that? Don’t you already miss it? I do._

_I do._

She’d said none of this. And their tea went cold as the silence that stretched between them.

But now it’s molten hot in Basira’s mind, a brand of regret searing and sore, and she keeps prodding it, anyway, because maybe something else will ooze up from the wound, something more than old blood.

It’s… exhausting, playing it over and over, trying to remember each word, each inflection, each hint of laughter and relief in Daisy’s voice. It _hurts_ , so badly she can feel it cramping up her legs, but if she stretches or shifts positions, then Daisy will know she’s still awake, and she can’t face this.

She _won’t_.

So she does the only thing left at her disposal. She tries to, anyway. To sleep. Or whatever approximation she can achieve, thereof. She just needs it to _stop_ , needs it to be quiet, needs the image of Daisy, so gentle and vulnerable, to ease from her mind, and all the hypotheticals along with it.

It finds her faster than she knows: the stillness, the sleep. And the dreams are waiting.

Everyone’s there. Everyone that matters. 

Daisy. Jon. Martin. 

Freya is holding Jon’s hand; with her other, she reaches for Daisy’s.

Basira lunges, a sluggish composition of limbs and rage, but Jon stops her.

His hand brands to her chest, like he just might dig his fingers in to rip out her heart.

_It’s not there_ , she wants to tell him. _She did that years ago._

But he’s not trying to hurt her. It’s just his palm, twitching with each pained beat that pulses beneath it, steady and steadying, same as the one that keeps Freya beside him, keeps her from fluttering off into nothingness.

Shadowed behind him, Martin and Daisy have dissolved to silhouettes, but Jon and Freya remain a steadfast image, tangible, consequential.

She doesn’t know what to do with it. Where this is meant to go. So she does nothing but endure the weight of Jon’s hand, his eye, until she feels that’s all she is to him. A broken chest. _Seen_.

Then it all… shifts, vaulting just left of itself, each person and purpose before her made strange and uncanny, but still recognizable enough that she burns behind her eyes.

Jon and Freya are the only things that haven’t gone awry, still stood in front of her, statuesque and solemn. She can’t see their faces, or, indeed, any distinguishing factors. They just _are_ , and she accepts that.

And Jon’s still there.

And Jon -

And - 

“It hurts,” he says, “when you don’t say goodbye.”

And Basira says back, “How do you know.”

But he’s falling apart. Unspooling. Splaying out, web-like, fractal-thin, and weary. Having said everything she needed to with her mere presence, Freya goes with him, but not before raising her hand, the one he doesn’t have, and waving. Just a small, simple gesture before she disappears, leaving Basira alone and shaken, shot through with an implacable sorrow that she didn’t wave back. That she didn’t give a poor, helpless child even _that_ shred of dignity. Of closure.

_It hurts._

And.

She wakes up.

Jon’s not there. Martin’s not there. Freya’s not there - still buried.

Daisy is there - unburied. For a little while longer, she still _is_ . There and breathing and hurting in the bed with her. Sod pretense, Basira thinks - _fuck_ all the time she’s wasted hoping for more. Daisy’s awake, and she hurts, and Basira knows this - has known this - _always_ knew this. 

Always knew it was going to end. Not like _this_. But… something. Just not this, not… peace and choice and gentleness, where she can hold Daisy’s hand and watch the light fade, feel the fire in her sputter out and starve, sweetly. 

There’s another kind of calmness to be had, though, and when Basira finds the strength to roll onto her side and see - unsurprised - that Daisy is looking at her, she… smiles, and buries her face in Daisy’s neck, all hesitation fled from her person like a fugitive.

“Good morning,” she says as much to the warm pulse against her lips as the entirety of Daisy’s impossibly, beautifully thrumming body. So alive. And so tired.

“Morning,” Daisy says, her voice low and creaky. It makes Basira’s stomach swoop.

That’s all they share for a while, besides each other, tangling bodily, arms and legs, though most of it is Basira’s own effort. She won’t hold that against Daisy, though. Never again. Never.

So it’s an inevitability, really, when Daisy finally breaks their silent stupor, clearing her throat as if in preparation of some grand announcement.

“I… I need to see Jon,” she says, as haltingly as Basira could hope for. It still stings somewhat, but mercifully a bit duller: a slash of rust and blunt edged knives.

So she says, “I know,” trying her damnedest not to let it sound like permission.

Instead, giving it like a blessing. 

Because it is. It is, and she’s given it all to Daisy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- eye horror  
> \- child death  
> \- non consensual kissing/touching
> 
> Title modified from "My Heart Is Buried in Venice" by Ricky Montgomery


	7. How it could end where we started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for Content Warnings.

“Jon.”

He’s in the bathroom, braced against the sink’s edge and staring at himself in the mirror. Martin’s voice floats in from the bedroom, carried by the weight of its uncertainty, coaxing a fine sheen of shivers over the back of Jon’s neck where the remnants of deep, bruising kisses still smart. But he doesn’t stop looking. Turning his head this way and that, watching how the light catches his iris. He has to be sure. He can’t assume, anymore. Intuition has brought him this far, and now he must make a choice. And it must be correct. Or - or else… 

No. He can’t think about  _ that _ . 

But -

“Jon?”

Finally, a question, and Jon’s legs almost give with the caution Martin laces through each letter. Porcelain thin and certain to shatter if Jon answers. It doesn’t matter what the reply is, because none of them are what they want. The truth flays, he knows this, and he’s determined to keep it at bay until he can’t anymore, and they’ll crash through this together. Shatter, together.

Save, Martin won’t. Jon will be sure of that. He is so very, terribly  _ sure _ .

And - sure enough - there, just at the edge of his pupil -  _ flash _ . The winter to his autumn eye. 

His knuckles creak as he grips the sink tighter, tighter, his teeth grinding, his eye staring at itself. It’s gone, the single, damning bit of evidence, but Jon saw it. 

_ I see you _ .

A laugh caresses the back of his throat; he gags, and spits it into the basin, half wishing there to be blood but… there’s nothing. Just himself. Just -

“ _ Jon _ .”

He jumps, as Martin suddenly appears all around him: his image in the mirror, his hands encircling Jon’s waist, his mouth brushing the top of Jon’s mussed hair. His eyes - eyes that will never be Jon’s - half lidded and appraising. He smells of sleep and… something underscored and fizzy, a note of fresh, tickling crispness. Jon’s not sure he likes it, but it whisks away as he turns and takes Martin’s face in his hands, stares up at him, properly. 

The hands on Jon’s hips become heavier, and Martin’s mouth parts around a shallow exhale.

“Yes,” Jon says.

Not a question. No more of those. Not unless Martin asks them, and Jon will answer as honestly as he can bear. 

It seems, however, whatever queries Martin had prepared take a backseat to this, as the pressure of his hands turns bruising, and Jon gasps, eye fluttering. Martin is fast, so much more agile nowadays, and he seals over Jon’s stuttered inhale with his own breath, his efforts insistent, grounding, and everything Jon needs. His mouth, always so soft, always so giving.

The sink digs into the small of Jon’s back as he lets Martin lead at his discretion, and Jon relishes the discomfort, because it means Martin’s not relenting, not giving up on him or  _ this _ , cursory though it may be. They’re allowed some spontaneity that  _ isn’t  _ contingent upon certain suffering. They’re allowed to be only each other, bodies to share, transgressions to forgive with the simplicity of mouths and teeth and roaming hands. They’re allowed, no matter how fleeting it is.

“ _ I love you _ ,” Martin whispers against Jon’s lower lip.

His knee rests between Jon’s, and Jon lets gravity guide him against it, the overwhelming sensation of Martin’s closeness, of Martin’s demands, usurping every self-castigating thought that’s been careening around his head since Magnus opened his eye and the end dawned on him like an ill fated sun.

But Martin… Martin… he’s everything that  _ isn’t _ that, everything that has saved Jon over and over again. Is what saves him now, guides him to safer shores where nothing lurks in the shoals. Until the tide comes in, of course, but that’s Jon’s decision: whether he will drown entirely, or whether he’s strong enough to keep his head above just a little bit longer.

Which is why he has to push Martin away; loathsome and regrettable an act though it may be,  _ this _ isn’t for now. There’s too much at stake to be distracted from, but he promises, silently to himself and to Martin, that this isn't over. Just put on hold, for the time being. 

Martin seems to understand, though not without a brief flash of disappointment souring the thin veil of bliss across his face. Jon relents, at this, and pulls him into one last kiss, an unchaste thing of longing that starts in his chest and ends on the sigh that curls over his tongue and into Martin’s mouth.

“I love you, too,” he says, because he hadn’t responded, and also hasn’t said that  _ nearly _ enough in the past few days. “And -”

A knock rings out from the bedroom door, two terse raps of tired knuckles that don’t exactly startle them, no, but they punctuate the end of the moment and shepherd them into another, one of finite and lasting actions.

“And it’s going to be okay,” he finishes hurriedly, but no less sincere, even as he sidles past Martin for the door.

There’s no real reason for his haste. He already knows who it is - not by grand design or Magnus’s meddling, no. He knew the moment he awoke and saw it all laid out before him, riddled in the ceiling overhead. Desiccated amidst the dust motes in the air as he slouched for the bathroom. 

Staring back at him, razor-glint blue in the mirror. 

He also knows it’s shock that’s keeping him sane, keeping his feet moving for the door - shock that lifts his arm, guides his hand to open it. That keeps him calm. 

Then the sight of Daisy, hunched and hopeful, her eyes aglow with what might be tears as Basira holds her, hands braced on her shoulders… 

There’s a dozen pieces swirling around Jon’s head, jagged effects of indeterminate size and shape and context and result, but Daisy’s mere present snags two from the maelstrom of his grey matter and pins them down like moths to a corkboard. Jon will dissect them later; for now, he’s content that they’re, well, _ there _ . And that Daisy is here.

“Hiya,” she says, smiling sadly. And takes a step, two, and falls against him, punching a surprised “ _ oof! _ ” out of him as it becomes apparent her goal was a rib crushing hug.

“ _ Nn’ _ sira?” He manages, as Basira stands stoically by the wayside.

“Jon,” she says back, unhelpfully. But not cruel. Just not quite on his side, which is all the better for her, because he’s still not even sure where the fuck he stands.

Presently, he’s content to withstand the force of Daisy’s affections which - actually - feel really, goddamn  _ nice _ after all the time they’ve spent not reconciling. Everything’s been contingent on disaster after death after distraction. It’s bloody nice to just hug her. To be  _ allowed  _ to hug her. Basira’s passivity is a miracle in and of itself.

“She said she needs to talk to you,” Basira offers, as if she’s privy to his silent revelation.

He doesn’t tell her he knows, doesn’t want to run the risk of furthering whatever suspicions she’s suspending for Daisy’s benefit. He also doesn’t want to know those, either; unless Daisy feels inclined to share, all that matters is that this is working, and this is happening. 

His stomach dives at that thought, but he grits his teeth, swallows, and squeezes shut his itching eyes - even behind the bandages - as he hugs Daisy harder, savoring the warmth of her wiry frame. She’s still so strong, and he almost tells her this, but it wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be right. It’s not what she needs.

“Missed you,” Daisy murmurs, grounding him in the gift of her presence, and he gives her one final  _ squeeze _ before pulling back, assessing her at arm’s length.

Which is when Martin’s hands fall upon his shoulders, and his heart fairly soars.

“Missed you, too,” he says, still keeping his attention fixed on Daisy and offering a smile that echoes, wanly, in the creases beside her tired eyes and around her mouth.

“We’ll give you the kitchen,” Martin says behind him, and Jon watches Basira’s expression remain ever impassive, though at least she’s no longer staring him down, instead directing her gaze just over his head at Martin.

But then Daisy says, “No,” and the entire script goes awry.

“Daisy?” Basira moves with devastating purpose, one-two quick strides till she’s all but looming beside Daisy. She doesn’t interpose herself, though; something tells Jon she doesn’t have that authority anymore. 

“You stay here with him,” Daisy continues, not for a second taking her eyes from Jon, to such a degree of rigidity he can see his reflection - distraught and hopeful - trapped and warped within her greying gaze.

“Out of the question,” Basira scoffs, and even Martin’s grip tightens around Jon’s shoulders.

“I wasn’t asking,” Daisy says, forgiving but firm in a way Jon does not recognize coming from her.

“I need to see him,” she says, finally turning to Basira, and Jon exhales, a held breath that had been pushing his ribs out near to snapping, and he sags back against Martin.

“ _ Jon _ ,” this whispered stridently in his ear. In such a daze, Jon puts up no resistance as Martin guides him away from the crescendo of hushed conversation now sparking back and forth between Basira and Daisy.

_ No, please, _ he thinks, a dull and colorless effort,  _ I have to - _

No. No he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to know a goddamn thing, and he digs the heel of his hand into his bandages as the vile thing beneath them  _ pulses _ irritably.

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” he snaps, when Martin lets go only to promptly begin fussing at his face.

When he looks up, Martin’s holding his hands to his chest, his face drawn in a shadow of hurt.

“No,” Jon says, and reaches for him again. “No, no I’m sorry, Martin. I’m sorry. Please - just -”

Despite Martin’s size, Jon’s found he’s quite easy to manhandle on occasion, so he tugs Martin close and wraps him up in as much affection his meager arm span can offer.

From across the room, the whispers have dulled, Daisy and Basira evidently moving their little domestic to the hallway, and Jon breathes a suffering sigh.

“Jon,” Martin says, sounding not in the least bit placated, but at least it’s not that pitying tone of worry. “Do you know what she wants?”

What a bizarre and scintillating question. He could laugh, really.  _ He _ could.

“No,” Jon says roughly. “N’d I don’t want to until she tells me.”

“ _ Jon _ ,” too easily, Martin plucks Jon’s hands from their death grip in his shirt, and jostles him back, so he can get a good, firm look. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I - I’m not,” Jon says. He’s… not, right? There’s only guess work to this, only the half-lucid scrambling of his mind trying to make sense of last night and the epiphanies washed away upon waking. Only scraps remain, only a few snapshots of Magnus’s laugh, his threats.

His,  _ nothing they can do. _

But Jon’s mind, threadbare from so much abuse, still managed to snag on that; on  _ they _ . Which became  _ us _ . And us means so many things, so many outcomes. Us means him and Daisy. Us means Basira and Martin. Us means him still with  _ them _ , if he can just bend the rules the right way of wrong, and can accept what must transpire. 

And it starts with Daisy, with what he will not  _ know _ of her. She deserves that dignity. She deserves to be exposed no longer. She deserves herself, and when she chooses to confide in him, then he will know, and then they can start on the end, together. The  _ us _ of their sacrifice.

Unsurprisingly, he can’t really… dull all that down into a convenient info-bite for Martin, nor would he want to. Because that would be so much worse than a lie. 

So he squares his shoulders, takes Martin’s left hand, kisses it.

“I can’t tell you,” he says, “because I don’t know for sure, but this is something she’s worked for, and I’m not going to take that from her, Martin, I can’t.”

Martin breathes, still not letting go.

Then his hands make their painstaking way to Jon’s face, cradling his jaw as Jon leans helplessly into the touch. 

“What about you. What can’t you tell me.”

An icy gale fills Jon’s lungs, makes his next inhale a painful thing of shards and uncertainty.

“I…” he has to choose his words so carefully. He can’t lie. He can’t tell the truth. He can’t be sure of any of it, but… 

He  _ won’t _ lie.

“I don’t think it’s time yet,” he settles on, his heart a bouy of driftwood almost too heavy for the tide between his ribs. But it stubbornly surfaces, pulls him with it, and settles. 

And waits there, because it’s not his time. Daisy is now. He is later. And later can mean anything, can stretch  _ anywhere _ if he’s determined enough.

It can be enough for them.

“Will you tell me?” Because Martin is so thorough, his worry, ever infinite, and his love even more so, an encompassing balm that soothes Jon from skin to bone to soul. Hell, were they afflicted of some fairy tale fate, it might be enough on its own to oust Magnus, entirely. 

But then, there’s the blessing of reality - agonizing though it may be - because Jon has to work for this, too. Must bleed and thrash and cry and  _ hurt _ so the quietude after will mean something, will sting like blackthorn, scarring him sweetly. And then will heal. They, always, can heal.

So Jon says, “Yes. I will,” and seals the promise with another mark over his heart as he places Martin’s hand on his chest. 

“And you’ll… come back, right?”

This is much more immediate, and a fear far more easy for Jon to contest.

“I’d never leave,” he says, only understanding the irony of his statement a second too late, and he… laughs. Cracks a soft snicker that earns a raised eyebrow from Martin.

“Ah, nothing,” he says, trying to find his footing upon more appropriately severe ground, but the moment’s dashed, and he’s glad to see it shatter. 

“I just - well  _ that’s _ a bit of a lie, actually, isn’t it?”

“Oh,  _ oh _ ,” Martin’s hardened expression softens wonderfully, and he half smirks half glares at Jon.

“That’s not funny,” he says, despite himself.

“Is a bit,” Jon counters. 

Because if they can’t laugh, if they can’t make Jon’s stupid foolhardiness into something palatable, what the hell else can they do?

“Fine,” Martin concedes with a somewhat theatrical huff, but his face falls, again, and Jon sobers, in turn.

“Just… promise me you’ll be okay.”

Which needs another lie, doesn’t it? But he’s getting a feel for this, the best way to circumvent the dreadful  _ smile _ gnashing in his head. 

He says, “I need to help her, Martin,” and takes Martin’s hands for emphasis, kissing each one twice over. 

The last, a far more intense affair than the other three, lingers in the pale web of soft skin between Martin’s thumb and index finger, Jon settling there so neatly, as though his lips and breath were made only to know this: the sensation, the awe, the simplicity.

“Jon -” Martin starts, so ragged and cracked a sound, but someone clears their throat behind them, and Daisy’s voice follows, sad and complete.

“Let’s go,” she says.

She doesn’t touch Jon, doesn’t place a hand on his shoulder to steer him away, but Jon feels compelled all the same. The hardest part is… Martin lets him go, lets him  _ let go _ and turn and see Daisy, more resolved than she was just moments earlier, and every part of him that is a coward, is afraid, is  _ too-soon-too-much-I-don’t-know-if-I-can-make-this-good _ , wants to hide beneath the duvet forever, permitting only Martin to come and find him, like a child playing pretend, like - like -

Freya’s face, the disfigured iteration of her youth so terribly stolen, flashes across his vision, fitting over Daisy’s own visage in a way that’s far too succinct to only be a memory. 

“Basira,” he whispers, and Daisy’s sharp stare cuts through the mire of Freya’s eye, the  _ staring _ returning to a latent thing pacing behind his bandages. The tiger, subdued.

He… doesn’t actually know why he said that, but it’s out in the air, confusing everything, and possibly inciting another altercation.

But a quick glance over Daisy’s shoulder shows Basira is stood silent and brooding by the door, apparently not having heard him. Or, if she has, she’s choosing not to act - an admirable effort on her part. 

And then Daisy says, “What do you want, Jon,” and he rather wishes Basira had taken the bait, had marched over and snatched Daisy away so they could all continue in this liminal void of  _ nothing’s-getting-done-but-nothing’s-happening-it’s-okay-we’re-all-just-peachy _ .

She didn’t, though. Doesn’t. Continues to  _ not-do-so _ while keeping a nigh tangible distance from Daisy, one that makes Jon acutely aware of how much he misses Martin’s hands. Blindly, he reaches behind himself, and finds one, holds it tight. But he reserves his attention for Daisy. She’s owed that. For all that she’s done and all that she is about to do, she deserves  _ everything _ .

“I… want to talk,” he tells her, the closest thing to a lie he can muster without dishonoring any present parties.

She nods, “Good, so do I.”

Jon huffs a small laugh. Martin squeezes his hand. His eyes burn.

“Good.”

-

She isn’t stupid. Basira doesn’t think she catches on to the more nuanced details of her clever little quips and whatnot, but Daisy hardly missed the way she addressed Jon.

_ Wants to talk to you _ .

_ Wants to talk. _

_ Talk. _

Hah.

In their line of battle, that’s world's away from what Daisy confided in their bed, and implication is everything anymore. So she turns it back on Basira, after calming her. Because, sure, she’ll  _ talk _ with Jon. She’ll have a lovely little chat, absolutely, of  _ course _ . And then she’ll have her good, long look, and finally solve this goddamn exhausting puzzle. She’ll cleave herself bare, and he’ll do the same, and they’ll see what comes out the other side, together. And if all goes right, well… then maybe soon she won’t see, at all. 

But she’s not holding out hope for exactly that. The curse of a one track mind, as it were, but she trusts Jon has a myriad of solutions to pick and choose from. And, ultimately, the result will be the same: her statement, taken. There’s just a bit of song and dance to be had before then. 

And Jon needs something, too; she can taste a pursuit from 3 kilometres away, after all, and his sits tangy and bittersweet at the back of her throat, a bouquet of dried peonies and timothy grass.

Pressing as everything is, she almost hates to take him away from Martin - who she begrudges nothing, except perhaps that he’s a little too doting, maybe, though she sympathizes closer as a friend than anything else. He’s such a solid, kind, and worried picture stood behind Jon, his gaze trained on her like empty bullet chambers, all threat and no malice, a perfect complement to the unending roulette wheel of each of their fates.

“We’ll be fine,” she says.

After an arduous second of deliberation, Martin nods, and a small pang of sorrow wriggles in her chest, regret that she never took the time to properly get to know Martin the way she had, Jon. He’s a good man, Martin is, a good person. Loyal, caring, a right bastard when he wants to be, and makes a damn fine cuppa. At the very least, she can take comfort in the fact that he’s Jon’s, that Jon can live his life with someone so guarded and so safe. 

“We’re just going to go for a walk,” she continues, because the last thing she wants to do is leave him in the dark. She hardly suspects Basira is going to engage him anymore than she has to while she and Jon are off, but she also doesn’t have the energy or capacity to care beyond a surface level worry. So, cut and dry facts it is.

“Sounds - sounds good,” Martin says. “Um, mind the fog, yeah? And the -” he waves a hand overhead, as if the eyes have done anything of late to cause trouble. 

What a docile and boring in-between it’s all become. If it weren’t for the matter of her and Jon hanging by the threads of their respective patrons, it would almost be nice, would almost be a forgettable blight and perhaps they could just… pick up from here. But it’s never so easy. It’s either the full blown apocalypse, or not. And she is so tired of being its monster.

“F’course,” she says, and takes a step back, waiting for Jon to follow, to - well - pursue, as it were.

After a moment, he does, and Martin takes a few doddering steps, but only to see them to the door where Basira visibly struggles not to block the way to the stairs.

Daisy still keeps Jon behind her, ushering him out and crowding closer to Basira. 

“Hey,” she says, forcing Basira to meet her gaze, because she’s already forgotten the desperate things Basira spat. Only the softness of her tears and her rough palms seeking Daisy’s face, her lips, remain etched upon her person. Because a cornered thing will still fight, and all Daisy can do is wait for it to tire.

“Don’t do this,” Basira croaks, her shoulders trembling. “ _ Please _ .”

“We’ll be right back,” Daisy says, choked up, herself. “Said it yourself, yeah? Fresh air’s good.”

Basira actually laughs, a broken little sound that must break the levee, too. When she looks up again, her eyes are soaked and sad and beautiful.

“Okay,” she whispers. It’s barely a word for how quiet she is, but Daisy will always hear her.

And Daisy echoes, “Okay,” and leans in to kiss her, to melt the pinched lines around her mouth, but Basira stops her, a hand to her chest and so many stars in the tidal pools of her eyes.

“Later,” she says, and it’s Daisy’s turn to laugh, wetly.

“Yeah, okay.”

She pointedly does not comment on how needless an incentive it is. Although, neither does she address the way her heart falls in on itself, a dense singularity of almost overwhelming  _ I-changed-my-mind-I-can’t-do-this _ . But the only alternative is for Basira to watch her tear herself apart, a beast of such ferocity even she won’t be able to find her way back. And she won’t. She can’t. Never again.

“Good,” says Basira, and Daisy knows she almost means it.

-

He watches them from the kitchen window, their slow, meandering tread into the hills, one of Daisy’s arms slung across Jon’s shoulders, keeping them in step. It’s almost jaunty, the way they move together, a nervous familiarity. But the frantic rhythm Martin’s heart hammers out doesn’t match their strides, so he can’t appreciate it as anything more than a promise. That they’ll be safe. That they’ll be back.

Hell, he’s not even worried about what could be out there. The safehouse and its environs have proven docile as, er, perhaps not a lamb. Maybe more of a badger? Or an ornery stoat? Christ, his similes need some work. When did he last pen a poem? 

His mind wanders this trail of menial, baseless concerns, till he trips on a less than ideally conceived metaphorical tree root, and crashes back to reality. His eyes unglaze, snapping to attention, scanning through the window, but the portrait it paints is empty. Jon and Daisy have disappeared, leaving only a faint path of footsteps through the mist that forever adorns the pale grass.

No. Martin is not worried about that. Neither eye nor fog could hope to oust the sheer  _ terror _ of Martin-without-Jon. But he’s with Daisy. They need this.

“You’re shaking.”

And, now, he’s jumping, an embarrassing near-foot into the air. He whirls around, and there’s Basira, looking everywhere but at him as she takes a seat at the table. 

They’d just sort of… left her at the top of the stairs. She’d refused to come down and see Jon and Daisy off on their little constitutional, and Martin half expected her to remain there until they got back, or at the very least, to hole up in her room again.

Instead, she drapes herself wearily by the elbows atop the table, and hangs her head in her hands. Every bone in Martin’s body, every plucked-heart-string fiber of his being screams for him to do something, say something,  _ do _ something. She’s right, he’s shaking, but who cares? Not her, only enough to comment on it, and certainly not himself. Jon would, were he here, but that’s the whole bloody point. And now Basira is offering a… what is this, a truce? They’ve been to hell and back together, so it seems about damn time, but -  _ Christ _ \- it’s still too soon, and Martin has no idea how to handle it. 

As it transpires, he needn’t worry himself so much. Because Basira lifts her head, revealing an expression so world weary that Martin could collapse to his own knees right then and there as she rasps, “Am I a monster.”

It’s more of a statement than a question, which lands three successive blows to Martin’s already ailing heart. He staggers to the table in a haze of  _ need-to-fix-this-she-can’t-believe-this _ . 

He gets about as close to her as she’s ever allowed, which equates to a foot and a few centimeters, till their frustrating boundaries of decorum reassert themselves, and she flinches away, glowering.

“Answer me,” she demands, not at all the reception Martin could have guessed, but it shocks all prospects of  _ hug-it-better _ from his system and reminds him just how severely they… don’t operate like this. Hell, he hasn’t ever even hugged Daisy, and she’s less likely to tear his throat out than Basira is. At present, anyway.

That doesn’t make her a monster, though. And neither does loving someone.

“No,” said with as much definitive force as Martin can muster, but her eyes only narrow, further and further, like if she can’t see this, it’ll all go away.

“I don’t want your pity, Blackwood,” she snarls.

“Good,” Martin retorts, just about sick of this runaround. “Because I don’t fucking  _ have  _ any for you, okay?”

And just like that, her entire demeanor shifts. Her eyes widen, staring embers of a smoky quartz blaze. Beautiful and sad.

“I  _ care _ about you,” Martin says, determined not to lose this sudden momentum. “We’re the only two people who know what the other’s going through. No one else is losing the ones they love to fates we’ll never understand. It’s just us, Basira, just you and me, and all we can do is be there for each other and hope that Daisy and Jon have figured something out, and if they have, that they’re willing to share it with us. Because if we aren’t there for them? If we let this tear us apart? Then what the hell do they have that’s worth fighting for? What kind of humanity can they have if we can’t keep ours?”

He sucks a deep breath, his lungs burning with exertion, his mind a calamity of catharsis. 

“Fuck pity,” he says again, enthralled by the conciseness of his vitriol. 

And, “I don’t feel sorry for you,” a truth that lifts from his shoulders like ravens taking flight.

“We’re in the same sinking ship, okay? Sorry isn’t going to cut it anymore. We either work together, or we’re all going to drown.”

“Would it be so bad?” Basira says. Now, a question, her eyes pleading for an answer.

“To drown. All of us. Would that be so awful?”

Martin’s throat tightens, his hands itching for something to hold, his chest ablaze with the sheer sanctity of his own hurt.

“Is that what you want?” He eventually manages, more of a croak than actual words.

Basira looks at him for a long time, longer than she’s ever afforded. It’s a flaying kind of experience, but Martin meets it head on, until she ducks hers again, and mumbles to the table, “I don’t know.”

Martin exhales. That’s good. That’s  _ fucking _ excellent. 

He can’t really espouse that kind of elation, though, so he says, “Jon used to tell me that, how good it felt not to know things.” 

It’s just askew of the exact thing he needs to explain to her, and it grabs her attention again, so - well…

He bites the bullet, despite the way she bristles, shivers, and clutches uselessly at her own arms. 

“I - I think it’s a good thing, Basira,” he says. “It’s good to be afraid like this, to be uncertain. It makes us strive for the best outcome, makes us work for what matters, not what’s already been idealized.”

“Is it so wrong for me to want her to live?” Her words are muffled by a cascade of tears, but Martin hears her as if she’s screaming, as if she’s driving each nail into the coffin of his own acceptance.

“Am I selfish for loving her? For wanting to wake up beside her every day? To fucking  _ kill _ for her?”

Martin doesn’t have those answers. If he did, then neither of them would be here. They’d be running through the hills to find Daisy and Jon. They’d bring them back. And make this a proper home. 

Instead, he only has his own despair, his own unthinkable outcomes he doesn’t want her to answer.

“Is it our decision to make them suffer?” He asks, anyway, because what if he never gets to say them? 

“Can you love someone whose pain you’re orchestrating?”

“You don’t know pain,” Basira says, a cruel darkness tainting her words. “You don’t know what I let her do. What I protected her from. What I  _ lost _ because of her.  _ With _ her.”

“No,” Martin meets her grimace with every ounce of  _ hurt _ poured into his eyes, his mouth, his upturned hands. “I don’t know. And she doesn’t know. None of us  _ know _ , and that’s how it has to be.

“Maybe she asked to - to die this morning, and maybe she’ll come back looking for life. Whatever they decide, that is  _ theirs _ . You can do whatever you want, Basira. You can leave. You can scream at her. Hell, you can - can kill her yourself, if you want, but I’m going to…” somehow, he hesitates, as if he hasn’t said the most damning things already. 

“I’m going to love them,” he finishes. “For whatever they want, whatever they need, I’m going to be here for them.”

There is a long stretch of silence.

Then, “You love her?”

Martin blinks, almost laughs.

“What?”

“Them,” Basira murmurs, as if in awe. “You said them.”

Oh, shit. He did, didn’t he? 

Does he? Does he even know Daisy enough to love her? No, definitely not, but hasn’t he just gone on a massive rant about the beauty of unknowable things? 

So… 

“Yes.”

Because, in the end, she’s a human, and so is he, and there’s woefully few of each other left, anymore, that are worthy to weather such a burden. So, yes, Martin loves her. Not as he loves Jon, but as a - a body and mind, a soul to connect to, to find common ground with… yes. Yes.

Which, by default means…

He looks at Basira, a silhouette of mourning hunched at the table where he has stubbornly brewed tea every goddamn day they’ve suffered here together, pained and aching and useless and in love, loving,  _ loved _ .

“Do you?”

Because he can’t tell her, but maybe the capacity of her loyalty reaches further than she realizes. Maybe, if she’s made enough room in her heart, she will withstand the loss.

“More than I’ll ever know what to do with.” 

“Good,” Martin smiles, and for the first time in seeming eons, it bears no other meaning than itself.

But then, that’s the thing about catharsis, there’s no easy cutaway, no concise narrative flow to ferry them onto the next plotpoint of their epiphanies. And without the high strung back and forths of their respective revelations, it all comes staggering to an uncanny halt, the both of them suddenly, terribly shy and looking for every excuse to  _ not _ look at each other. 

Basira settles on her hands, though doesn’t bury her face in them, which Martin counts as a miracle of progress as he takes one last glimpse of her calming state before turning for the kettle.

He has a funny thought, then, about the warring gravities of words and seen things. For all they can throw around as many monologues as they like, the words will stay foreign in their ceaseless iterations until one of them actually… does something about them. Something visible, tangible, and lasting. 

And for all he sees this damn kettle countless times a day, it’s still the same old thing, still not a stranger. Until he pairs it with conversations unhad over cups left unwarm, undrunk, unwanted, it will still be a kettle, and it will still do absolutely nothing.

He doesn’t make them tea.

He turns back, and plants himself firmly in the seat across from Basira. He reaches out, and he takes her hands.

“Tell me what you love about her,” he says.

“What?”

He’s really starting to enjoy the sound of that, of Basira blindsided. It’s so unassuming, so gentle. 

“Just tell me,” he says. “I want to know.”

“I -” Basira blinks, the cogs whirring behind ashen eyes.

Martin recognizes the look well. For how to summate the sky and stars? How to contain in a singular few descriptions the very world, itself?

“You can start anywhere,” he says, as if that will help. He’s trying to stop that, though, baby-stepping everyone through their woes with pointless fix-its and  _ can-I-get-you-anything’s _ ?

Luckily for him, Basira’s never taken his bait, hardly ever took a cup of tea, in fact. But the way she regards him now, a bit helpless, a bit furious, it’s new and hazardous territory.

“Anywhere,” he says again, just to break the chilly silence. He doesn’t suggest the best place. The eyes and their windows - doesn’t share what he wants to share with Jon, what impossible places his love extends to, what he wants to do -  _ will _ do.

“And where do I end?” Basira counters. Another stymying question, though the answer tumbles from Martin’s mouth before he even knows what he’s saying, what weight it carries.

“Wherever she decides.”

Basira inhales.

“Okay.”

And then she begins.

__________________________________

  
  


“You’re really out of shape, you know that?”

“Well pardon me that my god didn’t give me incredibly toned legs.”

“Nah, that’s just policing, Sims.”

“Ah yes, your state sanctioned brutality workout. And how has that, ah, worked out for you?”

“Well I’m up here, and you’re down there, so you tell me.”

She hasn’t the foggiest where this mood has sprung from - a well of untapped ebullience that has her bright eyed and brimming over - but she’s not about to question it. Not about to take Jon’s quips anymore seriously than she would a papercut. A mild  _ bite _ of pain, sure, but it’s Jon. It’s  _ Jon _ . Making awful jokes. Making light of their awful situations. Making an effort for her. Making all of this possible.

Bloody hell she’s missed him.

“Well maybe if you’ll wait a min- _ uhwhoa _ -”

No sooner has he crested the hill than she bears down on him with a fierce hug.

“ _ Why _ ?” He wheezes, yelps a little as something pops in his neck, and then groans.

“Why not,” she says, not letting go. “We’re out on a stroll at the end of the world, and I’m going to die soon. Can’t I have a hug?”

“Daisy.”

She squeezes harder.

“ _ Daisy! _ ” 

She growls as he anchors his hands on her stomach and shoves till she’s forced to stagger back.

“What?” She snaps, her mania abruptly fleeing into dark and stormy territory, putting down thick and gnarled roots that twist around her bones.

“ _ What _ , Jon. You gonna tell me off, too? Tell me how selfish I am? That I’m just giving up? Tell me we can  _ get through this _ . That there’s any other way than  _ this _ ?”

“Whoa,  _ whoa _ ,” he brandishes upturned palms, a stance she recognizes well, one she’s seen so many times attempted over and over again as her prey fails to placate the inevitable.

So what does that make Jon? Friend or frenzy? She’s got him, hasn’t she? Finally caught  _ this _ . Isn’t that enough? It’s that  _ fucking _ enough?

An eddying breeze carries over the hill as she stares him down. Vaguely grey and thickly damp. She needn’t look overhead to see the eyes trained upon her. Jon’s own serve that purpose by themselves.

“Daisy,” he says cautiously. “How does this end.”

She’s so grateful he doesn’t ask. So glad he leverages that responsibility onto her - that great and terrible task, the sheer effort of uncertainty so strange and new to her years and years of pursuit without reason. 

So she asks - no -  _ implores _ , “For who?” and shudders to her knees, letting the cool dew soak into her trousers, chilling the skin beneath. 

“Me?” She continues, as Jon wagers a step closer. “You? Basira? Martin? Fucking  _ Magnus _ ? Who, Jon, who could it possibly be.”

He’s right in front of her, and his hands offer themselves over, a cradle of calluses and scars and lifelines cut short mid palm. Closing her eyes, she places her forehead in the fount of his fingers. They smell of cigarette stains and blood, aftershave and ozone.

“I’m so tired,” she breathes.

“I know,” Jon’s thumbs knead soft, sure circles against her temples. “I know.”

Her dignity long since fled, she nuzzles into his palms as deeply as she can get without unthreading his caress entirely.

“Are you tired,” she murmurs, when she’s content with the warmth encompassing her face. Jon’s hands go stiff. An answer all their own.

Still, she looks up, craning her head neck in supplication to his gentleness; he’s there, solid and real and  _ there _ . And around his head, a wreath of hazel irises adorn the sky, watching, pitying, waiting. Till a gust of fog envelops them, and then it’s just Jon, just his singular gaze. 

From both eyes, though, twin tracks of shining tears steadily flow. He’s so calm. So lovely.

“Your bandages,” she says, because she can’t say anything else.

He smiles. He laughs. He rubs his eye, but does not touch his wounds.

“S’okay,” he says. “I brought extra.”

The levity is a miracle, and she smiles back.

“You really thought this through, huh?” 

He actually manages to look sheepish.

“Yeah, guess I did.” 

Then, as if someone’s cut his strings, he goes to his knees, just as the fog clears again and the eyes return. But Daisy doesn’t care about them; there’s only Jon, level with her now. All she sees is him. 

She doesn’t touch him, and isn’t touched, in turn; they just observe, hoping the other might pull out what they can’t quite articulate.

It’s Jon who breaks, first. Of course it is. 

“When.”

She doesn’t hesitate.

“Thought I’d let Basira decide.”

“You know that’s a terrible idea, right?”

He does not laugh, so Daisy does it for him. She’s surprised to find the sound of it so wet, the sensation trapped at the back of her tongue. When did she start crying?

“She deserves at least that,” she manages in spite of herself.

Jon flinches, but she doesn’t think to question it. That’s not her role in this.

But… still…

She can’t help it. Can’t help loving him, in their strange way. She supposes there’s still a hint of that initial obsession, lurking beneath it all, her furious confusion over such a vexing man, the need to suss him out like grouse from the undergrowth. It’s settled, now. It’s quiet. And she loves him for the man he is, the personhood he’s clung to, the promises he provides to help her heal the same.

So… “What about you.”

_ What about Magnus. _

Because she has to know there will be retribution for him, anything, any kind of result he might be able to pull from this. She doesn’t care that her story might feed a monster. She doesn’t care if Jon wasted every ounce of strength protecting Freya from  _ him _ .

It’s still not a question, because she’s not looking for that kind of answer. 

He still looks so hurt. 

“Ask me,” he insists, anyway, his thin body wracked with shivers so fragile, the mere sight makes her teeth hurt. 

“ _ Ask me _ .”

In a motion better suited to happenstance than resolve, she guides him forward, pressing their foreheads together. Taking his hands she places one to where her pulse has finally begun to slow beneath her chest. The other, she brings to her lips, whispering over the knuckles in slow, measured breaths.

_ Ask me. _ This, heard behind the roaring static of his presence, the sheer power of his decision to give himself over to trust just as she has done to him.

So she does, she asks.

“How can I save you?”

And he trembles, a leaf dashed in a hurricane, a juddering spray of waves lashed upon the shoreline, meak, subdued, and forgiven. And he weeps. As does she. And they hold each other, the wind starkly cold around them, but it’s of no consequence. It cannot touch them anymore than the blood can find her, than the eyes can skewer him.

And as they hold each other through the wreckage, as they wait out their storms for the petrichor of peace, afterwards, it is not seen.

He does not see. 

She does not see. 

As a blue sky looks down upon them and, finally, starts to bleed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- eye horror
> 
> Title modified from "Levers" by Roland Faunte


	8. All is well - pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya all, sorry for the late update. Hope this makes up for the wait. If you're enjoying this, I'd absolutely love to hear, life is... hard atm and it's nice to know I'm not throwing things to the void.
> 
> See end notes for Content Warnings.

There’s no running for each other. No sobbing into shoulders. No flourish of angelic choirs or any such cliche. No grand reunion at all, really. There just…. wasn’t Jon and Daisy, and now there is. One leading the other through the door, to the kitchen, where Martin and Basira haven’t moved. Such potent, vivid relief suffuses the cottage as two becomes four again, that it’s hard to distinguish who arrives first. Martin supposes it was Daisy; she makes a quick enough beeline for Basira to reason as much. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care, much as he’s admitted to loving her in his way. Because here’s Jon, in his arms. Here’s Jon, kissing him. Here’s Jon, smiling.

“Hiya,” Martin says, a tad more throatily than he’d like for this momentous bloom of sheer happiness filling his chest to capacity.

Jon doesn’t seem to mind either way, and he moves in again, smothering Martin’s helpless grin with another kiss.

Basira is the most composed, by far, clutching Daisy’s jacket, staring at her, just to make sure she’s real. 

Daisy lets her, until the burden becomes too much ( _she’s so, so tired_ ) and she brushes her lips to Basira’s brow, easing the worry there, marginally.

“Love you,” she murmurs.

She isn’t the only one. All around the room, as late afternoon light spills in and gilds each shadow with ivory, such confessions can be heard - sighed and smiled and whispered - as if being uttered anew, as if being shared for the first time.

For how else to be human, than to love? Conditionally, warily, guarded, and fully. To love another. To love the circumstance of it. To love in spite. To love recklessly. 

For where there is love, monsters cannot be. So there are none in that unassuming house in the Scottish wilderness. None buried in the backyard. None writhing in the mist. None staring, watching, _seeing_ from above, down, throughout. Within.

“These are fresh?” Says Martin, when enough distance reasserts itself between his and Jon’s lips for him to take in his love’s face. 

He drags a thumb beneath Jon’s bandages. He does not touch.

And because Jon will not lie, “Yes.”

And because Martin swears so blind by his devotion, “Are you okay?”

And because there is no reason to lie, “Yes.”

And because it seems there is a storybook ending, after all, things are not pressed. Are not questioned as they should be. Are not, are not. For now, as consequence has yet to stake its claim, _it_ is not. And as they all four breathe in the palliative afterglow of such monumental accomplishments. As they forget to see what no longer looks in through the window, to hear what no longer sings a hearty blood-tune. And as they love and only love… 

As, after so very long, they do not feel afraid, there is, perhaps, the start of a resolution.

For there is no fear, here. 

Not anymore.

_______________________________________________

  
  


~~_When._ ~~

~~_When you’re ready._ ~~

  
  
  
  


They’re curled up in bed, her and Basira. Night came quickly; she and Jon had spent more time out than she’d intended, but just as well, she hadn’t anticipated -

“I was so scared of you, you know.”

Basira’s words, as they puff air onto her shoulder - where she’s buried her face - hold no heat to them, no body-warm pulse, so Daisy continues dozing, lulled by their closeness. Their honesty.

“You were so brutal, from the moment I first saw you. You just… bled this persistence. But you were so _fascinating_. Weren’t like any of those fucks in it for the discrimination. Hell, the amount of skinheads you dragged in, thought it was only a matter of time before you went after one of our own.”

“Would have, too,” Daisy half-snorts, recalling their supervisor with rather, ah, scarlet tinged glasses. Fucking prick. 

“You remember our fourth Section together?”

Daisy nods to no one, staring at nothing. She’s so tired. It’s so quiet. 

“They were, um… also?”

“Yeah, not far gone but… yeah.”

She’d smelled them before they even arrived at the scene, the stench of _Another, Pursuing_ . The mania in their movements, even as they were bound head to foot. They were hardly extreme measures, really - and Sectioned incidents were given more than enough leeway to proceed as befitted the situation - so Daisy was sure to get a few swift snarls and kicks in to show them who could _really_ tear limb from limb.

She’d not known at the time what it was that riled her so completely, what made her mind reel and roil, her blood flaring through her person, a landslide of sucking, suffocating gore and mud. Endless. 

But not anymore.

“I don’t know if I loved you then.”

  
  


_~~I’ll never be.~~ _

  
  
  


Unburying her face, Basira speaks thin breaths against Daisy’s clavicle, a hand snaking under the covers and resting on her stomach.

“I didn’t,” Daisy says, definitively. “Not you. Not me, either.”

“When did you -?”

“I don’t know.”

It’s so… unlovely to say these things aloud, but so correct. So necessary. Lest they’re left behind, left with Basira and her questions, left forever wondering. Incomplete.

  
  
  


~~_Me neither._ ~~

  
  
  


“What about now,” Daisy does not ask.

Basira does, a small hum of a thing, precious and protected.

“Will you love me now,” Daisy still does not ask.

With all the blood that is left for Basira, she does - not - ask.

“Can you love me after.”

They’re quiet for a stretch of seconds, finicky little scraps that tick on by, heedless of how many cherished things they take with them.

Till Basira moves, propping herself on her elbow, gazing down at Daisy with a starved intensity. The hand on Daisy’s stomach turns to a fist, dense and grounding against the muscle and skin beneath it. As Daisy inhales, she meets its weight with no small heat pooling there in response.

“I don’t know,” Basira says.

Daisy reaches up, grasps her by the jaw. Drawing her down, Daisy kisses her like a howl let loose to a new moon. Stark, full, and impossibly gorgeous. A breathless confluence that leaves them both rasping.

And still Basira says, as eloquent as Daisy never could understand, “I don’t know.

“I don’t know how to love you. Not without hurting you.”

And still Daisy loves her. Kisses her. Holds her. Bites. Soothes. Tastes. Growls. Groans. Subsides. In the hopes this will prove to be enough of an answer. Because -

_Neither do I._

  
  


_~~But that’s okay.~~ _

_______________________________________________

For all his talk of love and loving, Martin exposed very little of the conflagration in his own heart to Basira. At least, in the way it mattered most. But he supposes that’s not really meant for her, is it. The way she loves Daisy is how he loves Jon, and it is also not. Not at all. Not even _close_. No one could possibly begin to understand his devotion, his fear, his sadness, and his calm. The unmitigated tranquility of loving and being loved by one so impossibly mercurial, one so tormented, and one so human. 

“Come here,” says Jon. “Please.”

He does, floating on footsteps he cannot feel because that would take attention away from Jon. Which is untenable. Which is blasphemy unparalleled.

He’s stood at the foot of the bed, Jon is. A miracle.

Because Martin had half expected him to take up his station by the window, or perhaps to crawl beneath the duvet and sleep another three days. Martin wouldn’t have blamed him for either. Of course not. 

But then Jon returned to him as if made anew, a subtle and fiery rage pulsing around his person in an auric cacophony of gentle ferocity. It hasn’t abated, either. And the room thrums with it. Martin’s chest swells with it. Jon almost weeps with it.

They fall into each other, though it’s Martin’s efforts that send them tumbling back onto the bed, leaving Jon pinned beneath his weight, carefully boxed in by Martin’s arms as he lifts himself to gaze at the beautiful man that is all his.

“Let me,” says Martin, as Jon strokes his jaw, as his other hand moves down, between their bodies.

He can’t finish the sentence. There’s too many that start like that, too many things to say to Jon who has heard, known, _suffered_ so much, that he just… can’t. Instead, he leaves it for Jon to decide, for Jon to lead, for Jon to sigh and gasp and surge up against him, pushing a broken sob into Martin’s mouth as they collide into one.

It’s different than that night upon the hill - those hasty moments to bring Jon some relief, just a second or three or four, a respite from the things inside him. 

It’s deeper, this time around. Heavier, with things unsaid because they have no right, no _place_ amidst their pleasure, as it’s shared without mercy, without reserve.

It’s slower, more careful, the deliberate unbuttoning of shirts, the tangled rucking off of trousers, the naked warmth of bodies pressed together, the unmitigated joy that overcomes Martin each time Jon gives himself over like this, legs and arms opened wide, accepting him, welcoming him, as though Martin could simply fuck every last terror from his body, his mind, till he’s nothing but a pliant thing of exalting moans and reckless writhing.

And it’s unthinking, but for how much he wants to make Jon feel _good_ , and how good he feels, because of that. It’s their minds quieted, their woes suspended. 

And it’s the way Jon clutches his shoulders as Martin trails his fingers down his chest, his stomach, an ambulatory thing of fond precision before they tease their way between his legs, massaging and stroking, marveling at the heat, the wetness, and how softly Jon cries as he’s breached by one, then two. 

It’s how Jon gives himself over, lets himself know what it is to be so thoroughly adored, to forget - at least Martin hopes - what plagues them, what they still have yet to amend, because none of that matters in these stuttering seconds, these loosed open knells of pure, unselfish love.

It’s when he pleads, brings Martin back to himself, to the aching of his very soul as he stares into Jon’s, his eye so watchful, so dark and heady and flaying that Martin can only bury his face in the crook of Jon’s neck as he buries his fingers deeper, wrenching the first wave of so much bliss from Jon’s body.

It’s after that, the careful slide of lips and tongue as Jon resets, inhales, smiles like he’s drunk.

And then that fury, that latent thing of such potent carnality, overcoming him, unseen but very much _felt_ as he grasps Martin’s shoulders, pushes him aside, and with the ardor and fluidity of a riptide, throws his legs astride Martin’s hips, his body a lithe constriction of worship and powerful _hunger_.

It’s that there’s no interim, no reprieve for Martin to reorient himself. There’s only Jon, staring him down as he moves, a morass of limbs and delicious slickness as he strokes his fingers over Martin’s flushed and neglected cock, guiding it against his stomach so he can then bear down upon it, sliding along the length. 

It’s the indecent suggestion without the whole sight for supplement, for the room is shadow, and Jon is silhouette, and he moves like a man possessed only of pleasure, his cunt exquisitely hot as he lavishes Martin’s body with his own.

It’s that Martin _can’t move_ , save a vice grip around Jon’s hips, holding him steady as he arches up, helpless to the heat, the wet, the _beauty_.

It’s when Jon trembles again, his body winding tight, his stomach a heaving plain, so Martin stills him, makes him quiet, brings him back.

It’s the flash of an unseen expression as Jon reaches down, again, resituating his fingers, their deftness so long and nimble around Martin’s cock, each one seeming to caress and stroke in every direction at once, with every conceivable slightness and pressure and meticulousness and clumsy, impatient haste. 

It’s the breath held between them as Jon pitches forward onto his knees, proper, as Martin fumbles to hold himself in place, as Jon lowers onto him, a moan punching clean from his chest like a prayer.

It’s the barely-moving-at-all-for-how-full-he-must-feel. The can’t-move-either-for-how-tight-he-is.

It’s the groaning of the bed springs as, somehow, Jon finds a way to take him deeper, to arch and whine and pant without recourse, without shame. How Martin shakily presses his palm to Jon’s naval, marveling at the gentle swell of it each time Jon lifts, and then takes him fully again, again, again.

And it’s the twining of their fingers together, the sweat and the sharp scent of sex, the slick sounds as Jon bucks in his lap, faster, faster, coiling again, building up _again_ , till he’s nothing but a contrite curl against Martin’s chest, whimpering and pleading.

And it’s when he exhales - a confounding harmony - as Martin tells him, “ _Now, love, please, please_ ,” and he trembles and twitches, his head thrown back, the column of his throat statuesque and perfect as he fails to find enough air. 

It’s the roaring in Martin’s ears, through to his every limb, the rush of fiery sweetness that suffuses his bones and fills his mind with cottony pinks and whites and star flashes in the aftershocks.

It’s clambering down from the high, together, Jon shaking bodily, as he remains seated on Martin’s cock, his hips grinding slightly, making Martin hiss and grab him again, forcibly stilling him. 

It’s the eventual detangling of their bodies, only to wend through one another, again, as Jon subsides against the mattress, and Martin wraps himself around that frail, perfect form.

It’s the need to not say anything, to merely exist in the bliss of each other’s afterglows.

It’s the questions unthought, and so unasked.

It’s the pure, uncontested reality that Jon is safe. That, soon, he will _always_ be safe. That they can share this as many times as they like, over a week a year a lifetime, because Martin is so certain now, conviction thick in his veins, his heart. 

It’s the soft and sacred hope that quietens his mind, turns his breath as slow and steady as the ones Jon takes beside him, because he must know, too. He must feel it. 

-

It’s the dreamless sleep that finds them.

-

And it’s the next morning, as bright and clear as it has not been for almost a year, blinding slats of honest to god _sunlight_ trickling in through the window on pale, malformed wisps, the very glow of it unused to itself after being trapped so long behind prying eye-cover. 

Which is still there, but ameliorated to an impossible degree of clarity that some of the real sky even leaks through. Such that Martin supposes he must be dreaming. And if he is, then the whole of last evening must have been just as much of a phantasm. 

But Jon’s not. As he rouses with a flourish of flustered sounds and careless stretching, Martin tears his eyes from the window to watch the catlike routine, a mesmerizing indulgence he hasn’t been able to enjoy since they first left the safehouse so many months ago. Irrespective of all the ways they have changed since then, it’s still every bit the endearing display as it ever was. Jon’s face scrunching up, his arms bending at frankly terrifying angles, a half shriek-groan as he reaches the crescendo and subsides back into the duvet with a satisfied huff. It’s lovely, precious, so very _him_ -

Except the second when it is no longer, when Jon’s eye snaps open, his hand flying to his bandages, panic sickly stricken across his face.

Until he sees Martin looking at him. Until his gaze flits sideways, over Martin’s shoulder, and the sunlight glimmers in his iris, a window inside another, a fractal of _seeing_.

“Oh my God,” he whispers.

“Jon,” whispers Martin back. Because what else can he say? How else can he put to words everything he’s feeling right now? The unfathomable _hope_ ? The ecstasy of something finally, _finally_ that is good and worth all of this death and pain and mistrust? What else could possibly contain so much, the _everything_ of his relief, that isn’t simply the name of the man he loves most in this born-again world?

Maybe - maybe he’ll write a poem. Maybe later, when it’s all a little less profound and he isn’t immediately indisposed by Jon wrapping bodily around him, they’ll sit outside in the sun together, and Martin will probably fail not to pen Blake directly down on the page, but who gives a good goddamn, because for once he knows the world isn’t completely ending. And he doesn’t know anything else beyond that - no - and what a _gift_ not to. What fucking a blessing.

And for a moment, he lets his mind wander further, to bigger prospects, loftier dreams. That, maybe, he won’t have to sacrifice his eyes after all. Whatever transpired last night - between Jon and Daisy, between him and Jon - whatever miracle occurred to bring them all into something so inexplicable, whatever’s bloody… clearing up the sky, he dares to believe it means more for him, for Jon.

They’re dangerous fantasies, at the severe risk of a very naive ignorance, but he revels in them anyway, lets his bones fill with the light streaming in from the window and the possibilities it brings.

Lets Jon shudder in his arms, because, Christ, if this is so overwhelming for Martin, then it must be nigh unbearable for Jon. He worries, for a moment, that it might be Magnus come to ruin this all over again. 

But the sun does not abate. And Jon, when he finally looks up at Martin again, has no fear in his eye. None, at all.

“I think this is it,” he murmurs.

“I know,” says Martin. And kisses him. And kisses him.

And, were he listening at the height of Jon’s trembling, he might have heard more. Might have heard the off-kilter meter of Jon’s whimpers, that which could only have been caused by a jilted recitation of something secret trying desperately to be spoken, but not to be understood. Not yet.

Were Martin listening, he might, _might_ have heard the apologies.

But he wasn’t. And he didn’t.

And so, they are not heard, not known.

And so, for the time being, there is still bliss.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_And when all is said and done,_

_there are so very, many stars._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Save, the world is not right enough for that, yet, for conclusions that, by all accounts, should be theirs. 

Because they haven’t reached them yet. 

Because it cannot be bliss.

That is not their story.

-

For a while, certainly, there is every valiant effort toward such a lofty and fickle thing. Each pair of lovers emerges from their respective rooms, renewed of vim and vigor, and shocked to see each other looking so… well… It’s left unmentioned, but each, in their turn, is silently grateful for the distance between their rooms and the cottage’s very thick walls.

It’s a passing amusement, though. Because there’s sun. And, regardless of the fact the sky still winces, clustered with grainy eyes pockmarked over by their own disillusionment - their own stubbornness as they fail to yield to the blue straining around them - the four survivors wander over the threshold of their home and out into the world, into anemic God’s rays that fall like ichor onto their faces, their palms, upturned and disbelieving.

“Jon,” this, from Martin. 

“I don’t know,” he says back. He doesn’t need to hear him ask. 

“Are you okay?” Martin persists, anyway, because he knows Jon will not lie to him. The novelty of their waking up is wearing off, and the severity of yesterday is sinking its claws back into his chest.

There are no fairy tales for them, he knows this. And Jon is only a miracle to him. He has to be sure.

And they’re all three looking at him, Daisy, Basira, Martin, as an errant thunderhead trundles overhead and the light dims, not quite sinister, not quite stark. Just a natural progression, an ebb and flow.

“I am,” Jon says. 

“We are,” Daisy chimes in, though she sounds particularly lethargic, leaning heavily on Basira as she nods at Martin.

“S’okay, Blackwood.”

And it’s not a lie.

And.

It’s not. 

They just aren’t asking the right questions.

_______________________________________________

It rains the following day, and no one accomplishes anything, all four of them once more enthralled at the natural world returning by wary increment, by confounding chance, by whatever’s gone right in the wrongness and set everything back on track. Insofar as it can be called such. It’s less of a track, as it were, more of a beaten dirt path, winding and scored with ditches and ruts, any traversal thereof more stumble than actual step.

Semantics aside, by evening, the grass has plumped up nicely, and a vague sheen of emerald stretches over the hills.

There’s still no proper sunset. Still no stars. Still the _Few, Watching_ in their hazel compunction. Still the haze of incompletion but no catalyst to see them through to the next of this.

They make love again, when they retire to their room, sated with watching the sky bruise and darken. Martin was really hoping for stars. 

Instead, there’s Jon’s, his gaze a most precious and rare gem gleaming from the floor where he’s gone to his knees again - _(I’ll let you.)_ \- where he takes Martin apart with his tongue and lips in quite a different fashion, certainly, but it’s no less debilitating. Till Jon allows himself to be dragged onto the bed, to be unwoven into pleasure all over again, braced hard and fast and gasping against the headboard. And Martin quite forgets, for a spell, all that he fears so completely.

And they doze in the sanctity of their closeness. And they do not speak.

It’s still raining when they wake the next morning, and the hills bloom ever greener.

-

It becomes a… routine, of sorts. The days pass, sluggish but with so few remarkable occurrences that Martin barely notices a full week has gone by until he’s counting out their rations and finds them fretfully low on dried fruit. This wouldn’t be a problem were their meager supplement stores not also devoid entirely of vitamin C tablets. Only he and Basira eat consistently, though of late Jon has shown a more promising appetite, averaging a meal and a half each day, alongside three very strong cups of tea.

That, too, is running out, and though Martin hardly suspects there’ll be a convenient stash of Tetley at the Newsagent’s, it really would be wise to head back to the town and see what there is to scrounge. Just as well, though Jon’s bandages need less tending to - a very, _very_ promising sign Martin does not approach for fear of ruining it alongside the rain - he still would like to try and find more supplies. Better to be prepared and all that, and he is still vigilant of Magnus rearing his awful compulsions.

In a not unexpected response, Martin’s met with no resistance from Jon when he proposes the idea for a trip to town, and when Daisy catches wind - from where she’s sat in a heap of duvets in the living room - well, it seems the team’s back together, as it were. And it would be a - well maybe not nice but - it would be a _way_ to break up the days. Much as Martin’s enjoying the relative calm after so many storms, he’s wary of them stagnating, too. He knows, first hand, how sinister that can be, and just because there’s been no fog rolling in doesn’t mean even the heaviest rain will keep it at bay. Quite the opposite, in fact…

Basira proves the more difficult opinion to sway. If only because getting more than two words out of her is a teeth pulling affair for which Martin is ill prepared.

Truth be told, he’s been worrying about her more and more, for the distance she takes, not only from him and Jon, but Daisy, as well. They’ll be in the same room - usually the living room, nowadays, rather than their bedroom - but after helping Daisy into a seat, or an extra layer of blankets, Basira will resign herself to the opposite end of the sofa, or the sill of the bay window. She’s never too far, but never close enough; it hurts Martin’s heart just to watch, because he knows the charade she’s playing at. Knows it like the scar upon his soul, white and itching and so, so cold when the fog would get too thick, or when conversation grows too muted.

So he insists, badgering her relentlessly until she, well, _relents_ . Says, yes, fine, whatever, _if you need my protection that badly, Blackwood._

They both know that’s not why. They both know nothing’s going to find them anymore, nothing but each other and the demons they choose. And Martin’s made… mostly nice with his. 

It’s about time she did the same.

_______________________________________________

It keeps raining. They keep indoors. He dotes on Jon, now with the decided addition of Daisy, and a few elbow-to-the-rib-nudges to Basira, but mostly, nothing really changes, only that their foodstuffs are more steadily dwindling as Daisy makes a shocking re-discovery of her taste buds.

Like particularly lascivious clockwork, Jon solicits him every evening, one of the few things that manages to keep Martin out of his head for at least a short respite. He’s adopted this new half smile, Jon has, a sad and almost dopey thing that makes whatever inquest had been forming on Martin’s tongue as to his well-being die there, too. So that Jon can kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him some more. Among other things that do an admirable job of making him forget almost every burden he’s tasked himself with weathering. Almost. He wants to ask about Magnus. He doesn’t. He wants to ask if Jon’s dreaming. Because he’s not. He wants to connect the red strings, but that’s playing fate, and he’s so afraid of losing.

-

It keeps raining, a rhythmic drumming gilding the world in a turgid, silver glow.

It keeps raining.

And it keeps, bloody _raining_. 

And it’s fine and lovely, so goddamn _cozy_ it makes Martin want to scream. And no fog penetrates. No eyes roll anymore than the few still puckering up the blue-grey clouds. And everyone ambles around the house in their respective pairs, finding menial tasks, ignoring the obvious, waiting out the gentle deluge as it fades more and more to white noise, a background hum disturbed only by the occasional _click_ of an especially fat few droplets striking the windows at odd angles.

“Almost sounds like the tapes,” Jon says at one point, and Martin nearly drops the bowl of porridge he’d been carrying over.

It’s thick and hearty, with steam curling in wafts of cinnamon and nutmeg because he’d stocked the spice pantry full to bursting when they arrived. 

At Jon’s comment, the smell becomes abruptly rancid, burning his nose.

No, wait, that’s just the onset of tears, isn’t it. 

“Kind of miss them,” Jon carries on, heedless of Martin’s discomfort, if only because Martin refuses to let it show as he sets down the food and sits beside Jon, as much an audience as he can provide. As much a listener.

That was one thing they could never quite pin down - the day when the tapes just… stopped. Whoosh. Gone. Martin expected it to tear a ragged hole in Jon’s psyche, the creepy little things so much a part of him, it seemed, that to go without would be unto a loss of limb.

But it just… happened, and suddenly they truly were so bereft of the awful Watcher, its prying hordes a necessity no longer. Its encompassing glare, infinite and complete. And so very indifferent. Exposing but uncaring, the intimacy of two single, spinning reels gone, forever. It was, perhaps, the cruelest injustice of all.

“I’m here, you know,” Martin had said.

Says Martin, now, as Jon stares wistfully into his eyes, like he’s simply seeing through them. 

“I know, love,” he replies, and kisses both of them closed.

_______________________________________________

It’s stopped raining, and as the last unfettered thunderhead clears, something in the house breaks, a foundational rift torn askew. It is not unnoticed, but neither is it mentioned, as Jon, Martin, Basira, and Daisy ready themselves for their journey ahead. Each puts the odd feeling down as a facet of their respective worries, and of course no one is keen to saddle anymore issues onto the relative peace that’s made its tentative home. So they prepare in assumed silence, only making light conversation that achieves nothing.

Just as well, for all the time they’ve had to prepare, they’ve done very little of that at all. No one expects such a reception as they encountered that fateful day on the hunt for Daisy, but they’re still necessarily wary. They still haven’t faced the new world properly. They still don’t know what to bring into it.

But, at the very least, they’ll do it together.

-

It’s slower, this time around, leisurely and subdued; and without the gut churning terror of _what-if-we’re-too-late_ , they take their time. No one acknowledges it’s mostly for the benefit of Daisy who, for all she’s spent the better part of a week shuffling quietly from one nest of duvets to the other, the fuss she put up about going along proved her metal wasn’t to be contested.

Except for now, as her breathing grows ragged, her movements uncoordinated, and if they weren’t already three quarters of the way to the town already, Basira would insist on taking her back.

As such, they’re nearly there, and Basira can’t bear to burden her heart anymore than it already is. So she gives Martin a stern glare when he glances sharply their way, and tries not to think too hard about the very distinct weight in her rucksack, one of cold metal and last resorts.

It’s a beautiful day - unfairly so - slightly overcast with a blanket of cirrus clouds unencumbered by eyes, so the sky is a cottony grey. The freshly minted green of the hills and distant treeline fairly sing in contrast, lushly vibrant and so terribly promising of a newness none of them can quite seem to believe.

It makes Basira want to scream. Or weep. Both at once would be beneficial, she thinks, but she holds it together. She has done so since everything began to be right again, everything save that which she cares most about, and she will keep at it until it’s impossible, until it, too, is wrong and ill fitting. Until Daisy stops clinging on for her sake and finds solace, at last.

That’s not for now, though. And Daisy’s still strong, even as she must pause every few feet to catch her breath. Jon rather insinuates himself when she does, breaking from his dutiful position by Martin’s side to cross over to Daisy’s and hers, enemy territory no longer.

He says nothing as Basira offers her water, rubs her back; he doesn’t even get all that close. He just sort of… watches. Not in the way that would usually inspire vengeful mistrust in Basira - it’s merely a gentle concern, with something only slightly conspiratorial tugging the corners of his mouth into a thin, conflicted frown. 

Daisy still hasn’t divulged what they talked about that afternoon, and neither has Basira pressed her for it. And she should hate Jon for that, alone, but she doesn’t. She can’t anymore. She can only hope that Daisy will know her limits and, when that time arrives, she will not seek Jon out, first.

-

“Christ.”

Martin.

“Fucking hell.”

Basira.

Silence. 

From Jon and Daisy.

And from the town, too, where - with the Lonely similarly retreated - so has the fog finally abated, leaving behind the depths of its cruelty, the violent loss it so callously infected into this quiet, desolate hamlet.

The bodies - what’s left of them, anyway - proliferate, macabre scatterings like potpourri without procession, littering the roads, the doorsteps, even some hanging half skewered on shattered glass through broken windows.

So this is what Freya Lockaby saw. This is what truly unfolded, subject only to her young, sad eyes. Even Jon hadn’t seen to such an extent. Even Magnus failed to plumb such catastrophically traumatic depths.

Jon reaches for his bandages, an instinct he’s been honing these past few days when Martin gets too nosy.

Like he does now.

“What is it?”

Martin touches everywhere but _there_ , and Jon swallows a shuddering inhale.

“Nothing,” he answers. He’s been getting better about the truth, lately. But he’s not ready.

“Are you sure? He’s not -”

“No,” Jon looks Martin fully in the eyes and prays there’s enough honesty in what’s left of himself. “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

“If - if I get even the slightest bad feeling, Sims -” warns Basira, though any venom is hampered by her wobbly and strained tone, the effort it’s taking to support both herself and Daisy clearly starting to wear on her.

And, Christ… Daisy. Poor Daisy, she hadn’t seen what it was like before, had she? Not the fog or the gathered spectators. There was only what Freya gave to her, secondhand. She shouldn’t be here; by all accounts she should _not_ , but her resolve knows no bounds, does it? Not until she decides so.

So he says, “It’s fine,” because Basira’s looking at him funny, and he can’t have that. He never promised her anything.

And besides, there’s work to be done, supplies to find. And now, too, there is reconciliation to be had in whatever way they can offer to the memory of this place. 

And it’s Martin, practical, wonderful, the-light-upon-the-impossible-shoreline Martin who ushers them all back to bearable levels of reality. 

“Right,” he says, and firmly tangles his hand into Jon’s. “Let’s start at the Newsagent’s, yeah?”

They’re stood in the main thoroughfare again, the same route they’d taken, though now with the added obstacles of far more debris. Morbidly, Jon wonders if the last maddening tendrils of the Spiral had been pulling some strings preventing them from seeing the bodies before, a last ditch effort to - what - save them further emotional agony? Taunt them? It always was less than neutral, and Jon would like to think the mercy he showed Helen might have counted for something, a leniency in his favor.

He’d very much like to think that. But wants and beliefs are two beasts of very different dice, no matter how you might play them together. And he’s bloody sick of games.

So he doesn’t. Play. Think. Like. Just lets Martin lead him along, wending the bodies, stiff and thankfully bloodless, almost peaceful in the final result of their collective misery. 

Still a slave to his wants, though, he almost looks back, to see what Basira and Daisy are making of this, but that isn’t his place. Daisy will come to him in her time, and, brutal though they may be, she’s owed these explications sans his interference. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

This, said as he and Martin come to a halt in front of the bashed in windows of the Newsagent’s. A few hundred meters further, and they’d have made it to the clock tower again. Jon almost does not want to see it.

He reaches for his bandages. He wasn’t even thinking, this time.

“Jon?”

“Yes. Er, no. No, I mean,” Jon struggles to refit himself into the conversation. Meanwhile, Martin stares with none too thinly veiled concern.

“Yes, I’m - I’m okay.”

“You can wait out here, if you want.”

“No - no, I don’t - ah - don’t want… to be alone.”

Martin’s silent for a second, staring at some faraway point over Jon’s shoulders. When his gaze settles, it may as well be a needle for how precisely it almost pierces Jon’s ruse.

“Jon.”

“He’s not here,” Jon says, before Martin can say something else to obligate him, to ferret him out from himself. 

Because he’s not. He’s _not_.

“It’s just a lot,” he adds. Because it is. It _is_.

Because Freya had buried _this_ , and part of him aches to consume it all over again, to appease the gaping emptiness burrowing still deeper and deeper. Because he’s so _sick_ of knowing, and he’s almost free, he’s so _fucking_ close, but look _look at this._

_Look at me, Martin. Look at what I’ve done. Look at what I brought into the world. The monstrosities, this incredible suffering. Look, please, because I can’t. I need you to see because I can’t anymore, and I’m so, so scared._

This, of course, is not said. Is not shared. Is not, is _not_ because of the lies Martin hasn’t been able to yet provoke, because of the courage Jon must bear to see them through. Because of the beautiful agony of relief he will have for his reward when it’s finally all said and done and dead. 

“If you’re sure,” Martin says, so disbelieving, and so hopelessly in love. 

And Jon wants to kiss him, wants to fall into his arms and sleep for a year, for more, for the rest of his life. 

One of those things, at least, is feasible.

“I am.”

He does not lie. And he kisses Martin, leaving behind a little bit more of his own diffident soul perched between their brush of lips, where it hovers, a spell, and then dissolves. The moment expired.

Martin laughs, like he might breathe the life back into them all, small and hapless.

“Let’s see about tea then, yeah?”

He offers his elbow like a well bred gentleman, like there isn’t a massive tear in his left trouser leg, and lord knows how many blood and dirt stains caked into his jacket sleeve. Because he knows Jon endears to him for all of this, and will do so long after they’ve both fallen to rags.

“Yeah,” he says, and takes Martin’s arm. “Let’s.”

-

There is no tea. But there are canned peaches, a sight Martin struggles not to openly recoil from. There’s only two of the nasty little blighters, leering at him from under a pile of half charred _Sun_ tabloids. If Jon notices them, he provides no commentary, so they’re left well and good behind. 

These two grievances aside, however, their ransacking of the shop earns them a fair few other spoils that will top them off for the foreseeable month or so, and probably more, still, since they definitely don’t have enough space in their packs to take it all in one trip. 

At present, Martin satisfies himself with some precious essentials: several books of matches from behind the counter and a half dozen lighters; any and all fruit or fruit based items he can find (peaches notwithstanding). He’s tempted by the liters of bottled water if only because he’d never had enough reason to splurge so egregiously, but they’ve running water at home, and it’d be pointlessly added weight. The small refrigerated section is hit and miss. The available sandwiches and perishable are mostly all spoiled, left as many days unattended as it’s been since the apparent fate that befell this place. Really, it astounds Martin more than anything. Here the town was, perfectly intact and most likely functioning through almost a year of the apocalypse, and no one ever noticed. 

Until Freya did, and by then it was far beyond too late.

Something twigs at the back of his head with that thought, and he shudders, finishes stuffing his rucksack to brimming, and hurries back for the shopfront where Jon has tasked himself with sifting through the available magazines. 

“ _Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish_ ,” he mutters the mantra under his breath, throwing aside the glossy pages with their bawdy stories. The cottage is rather lacking in available reading entertainment. What books they’d brought the first time over were hardly a shelf’s worth, and had been read thrice over, besides.

It’s such an oddly domestic concern to have, but Martin welcomes it anyway. How to keep his love entertained while riding out the tail end of doom? Too bad Agony Aunt isn’t taking submissions, Martin would have a doozy for her. 

“All set?” He chuckles as Jon jumps, Martin having snuck up beside him and nuzzled against him, resting his chin on Jon’s bony shoulder.

“Ah-hah, hm… I suppose,” Jon gathers his composure the same way a child would an overlarge handful of colorful stones they’d just dropped, scattered and lovely and dear.

“You?” He asks in turn, pressing a brisk kiss to Martin’s brow before nudging him aside and turning his nose up at the magazine rack.

“Mhm. Oh, and I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Oh?”

_So easy. It’s so easy. Why can’t it always this easy._

With a flourish, Martin produces a colorful package of party rings, presenting them to Jon like crown jewels. Which, to Jon, they may as well be the very same.

“Have I told you I love you lately?” He says, with the scrutiny and poise he once reserved for grad students wandering too far down the Archives.

“I might need convincing,” Martin deadpans right back, and earns a swift peck on the lips for his cheek.

“Convinced. There you are, love.”

Jon properly blushes at this, and takes the package with cautious hands.

“Thank you,” he mumbles.

It’s nigh impossible not to fret over how _sincere_ Jon sounds, to try and suss out the double entendre of his entire demeanor, so Martin carefully gathers up that urge and tucks it away for later examination, preferably when he’s less smitten with the ridiculous sight of Jon clutching a packet of biscuits in the middle of a ransacked shop.

“I’m ah,” Martin jerks a thumb at the busted out window; using the door just seems ridiculous at this point. “M’gonna see if Basira wants to come grab anything.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, good idea,” Jon finally peels his eyes from the biscuits, regarding Martin with the softest smile. 

“Let’s,” he says, and with his free hand, takes Martin’s.

Their meager levity fades the instant they reemerge from the shop. There were no bodies amidst the shelves or behind the till, thank god, and in his euphoria of _biscuits-for-Jon_ , Martin had almost forgotten about them. But it’s still all there, still not phantasmal. The desiccated carnage, the pantomime of Flesh and Slaughter without the dignity of such violence. 

Jon squeezes Martin’s hand tighter, and tighter still as they wander the streets, the objective of Basira and Daisy momentarily suspended as a deep, throbbing melancholy drapes a dreadful arm across their shoulders and steers them along, aimlessly. 

Or, not so aimlessly, as it transpires, and they find themselves heading for the clock tower, unresisting, unfazed just… an inexorable tread onward in the hopes of some kind of closure.

As fate would have it, so too have Basira and Daisy made their way to the tower, but they’re paid little mind; there’s far too much _else_ to take in. The bodies, here, are thickest, tangled around each other in a great mass. It’s grotesque. And it isn’t. There’s no blood. No gore. No dismembered limbs strewn, or faces contorted in pain. It’s just… quiet, a contemplative heap of collective mourning. 

Martin doesn’t notice he’s shaking until there are arms around him. Jon’s. Anchoring him, squeezing out the fog that squeezes his heart. 

At least it was peaceful. At the very least, there was relief.

“Oh Christ,” this from Basira, closely echoed by a subdued whimper from Daisy.

They’re stood closer to the tower’s base than either Martin or Jon is, and they’re staring at something, their faces twisted in disgust from what Martin can make out.

Wordlessly, he and Jon exchange a look, and then solemnly pick their way through the bodies, closer to their friends, though it’s really just an effort in sympathy. They already know what it is they’re going to find.

“Didn’t even get his name,” Daisy murmurs, her words an elegiac echo, striking off the stone of the indifferent tower and falling, dead, at her feet. Dead, where Freya Lockaby’s brother lies still and broken and quiet.

He looks so much like her, even through the tears that swarm her vision, that she lets fall, unbidden, because no one else cried for him, so she will do the honors.

It’s only mid afternoon, but the sky takes on a more oppressive hue as they stand there, a somber ochre green that spreads like spilled watercolor through the cloud cover, pooling thicker in some places, forming distinct and grotesque shapes. 

“Daisy,” Jon breaks the spell with a hand upon her shoulder, untethering her eyes from the boy, and thwarting the ones forming overhead. 

“I won’t leave him,” she says. 

“I’m not asking you to,” Jon replies, and with that terribly sage eye of his, his gaze sinks into hers. And when it finds the last of her blood, the stubborn, sinewy bit still clinging on, it waits there, a gentle crossroads upon which she can embark. Or not. It’s all her decision.

In the real world, he’s hugging her, where there are less metaphors and more direct inactions. This is not one of those. It’s warm and solid and _I-wish-we’d-had-more-time_ , another signpost, another _this-way-if-you’re-ready_.

And he’s murmuring - something only for her. Something always for her. 

“ _Just make sure this is what you want._ ”

_You, too,_ she thinks, and knows she has been heard.

_______________________________________________

She doesn’t remember the journey home. She doesn’t remember carrying the body of Freya Lockaby’s brother. She doesn’t remember digging, digging, digging into the soft, rain soaked earth beside Freya, till she’s staring down those six, impossible feet sans step or stone or coffin-creak dread. It’s just soil, and the scent of torn and fragrant grass. 

She doesn’t remember when Jon stopped watching and went back inside. When Martin left, as well, to console him.

Doesn’t remember when Basira _hupped_ down into the grave beside her, and kissed her. Only knows that her lips are tingling, and her eyes are burning, and there’s a body waiting for her, and for a long, long sleep. 

It’s a slightly comical ordeal getting out of the grave. Basira goes first, before proffering a hand into the cool, damp maw that hasn’t yet swallowed them. Daisy takes it without hesitation, and relishes the gentle _swoop_ of her stomach as Basira lifts her, balances her, holds her at the precipice. 

Daisy hopes that hand will be just as resolute when it’s time to let go.

For now, it helps. Cautiously taking the body of Freya’s brother from where Daisy deposited it on a bed of shyly sprung violets. He’s so frail, leaving barely an indent among the flowers, and Basira cradles him with infinite remorse.

“Let me,” she says, voice barely heard above the susurrus of grief that pounds in Daisy’s ears. It’s an off rhythm, an unsteady percussion that doesn’t understand itself. It’s perfect. It is not blood.

“Okay,” Daisy says in turn, and lets Basira pass, watches the care, the _pain_ , she takes to not set the boy down again as she maneuvers her way back into the grave. 

They’ve only one blanket to spare him, so Daisy tries not to think too hard of crawling things. The earth she’s gutted up, though, is devoid of any such creeping insects, is soft and dark and richly perfumed of health and growth and quietude. The quilt Basira bundles him - so lovingly embroidered - portrays a pattern of lacy vetch unfurling between fiddleheads as they weave and tangle across cream and olive fabric. The soil clings beautifully to it, and Basira pauses - a contemplative second - her hand stalling as it lifts a corner to cover the boy’s face.

She looks up at Daisy. 

She’s looking for forgiveness.

And Daisy loves her so. 

And she nods, releasing Basira from the agony of her attrition.

_It’s not your fault, and it never was._

_I’m so glad we could find this closure together._

And Basira smiles back, a wobbly, wet quirk of lips, before she turns to the boy. And so sorrowfully, she presses the quilt to his face, hiding him away.

And he is gone from the world, at last.

-

Daisy doesn’t remember the burial, the process too mundane and repetitive for her to focus beyond the vague awareness that Basira is out of breath, and that twilight is fast approaching. When it is done, though, she surfaces from her stupor, and before her lay two identical mounds of earth, their gentle, beneficent swell cradling sister and brother into peace. It’s a difficult sight, raw and unkind and merciful, and Daisy shivers, though there’s warmth enough to sustain her behind the eyes.

“Let’s get you inside,” Basira says, and, yes, that’s probably a good idea. It’s nearly night, and the sky is gloom, is unstarry, is cold and closed, and she is exhausted to her blood.

It’s slower now, with Freya’s story so wholly concluded, and Daisy walks out of sync with it, a most alien and alarming sensation, but it’s okay. Basira keeps her upright, keeps her moving, keeps rubbing her hands up and down her arms, searching out frayed bits of circulation to keep her stranded just a while longer.

Till they get to the front door and pause there, illumined by a yet meager shroud of night. It’s still never completely dark, but Daisy trusts Jon, even if she won’t get to see what he’ll achieve, even if she’ll never know the zenith of his sacrifice.

And they’re stood at the door, her and Basira, always destined to return home together, unable to be torn or bloodied or beaten such that they might never find a way back. This evening feels the most impossible of all, a conclusion to catastrophe, with only a cenotaph to follow, and Daisy stoops low as a headstone, hunched in Basira’s arms.

“Just a little bit longer,” Basira’s tone is a graceless, broken iteration of its once proud self, her heartache as boundless as the pulse that once careened through Daisy. Before the guilt caught her in a stumble, before the coffin caught her fall, before Jon and the end and the beginning of the end, and it’s here, at last, and it beckons so cold and sweet and _right_.

“Please.”

A… beat. The universe, exhaling.

“Okay.”

_I trust you can find a way._

For neither will she go the same, not as Freya or her brother. For to confine her would be a heresy to her honor, to what she triumphed over. 

_Just don’t wait too long._

Beat. 

Beat.

…

_I won’t._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


~~_But where is your blood?_ ~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- explicit sexual content  
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- implied mass suicide  
> \- implied child death
> 
> Title modified from "All Is Well (It's Only Blood)" by Radical Face.


	9. It's only blood - pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an incredibly tough chapter, if you're emotionally vulnerable I'd suggest checking the tags in the end notes.

It goes like this:

First, the denial. The complacency. The _still-can-save-her-there’s-still-so-much-left_. 

It’s one, three, five days since, and she’s flagging, yes, can’t even walk to the loo without a handhold, is more duvet than person half the time, for how deeply the cold seeps. Yes. _Yes, Christ, yes I know, I can see it, can’t I?_

It’s that, and the looks from Martin, the conspiratorial touches from Jon when he designates himself the one to bring her tea, because he’s stopped taking his so there’s enough left for her, her, _her_ , all of this for her, and this is what she gets? She’s saved so many, and she dies? Because she _wants_ that?

It goes like this:

The missteps, the stumbles and silent rages, the deep, rolling sobs she can’t imbibe because they’re never more than a room apart. 

It’s putting on platitudes and waking up in the morning and curling up at night, because she hates it, she _hates_ routine in the face of devastation. Hated it back at the camp. Hates it here. Hates the ones who enforce it. Hates herself, above all else. 

It’s _but-I-can’t-not-love-it_ , because it’s still time. _There’s_ still time. With her. Those meager smiles. That waning laugh. Those spine curling r’s when she can’t bring herself to not adore that wicker thin body against hers in the thick of the night.

They’re getting darker, now. She thinks she knows why. But she’s always been just that little bit too arrogant, hasn’t she.

It goes like this:

And keeps going, going, the days churning out another, another, tumbling over themselves 

A miracle. 

It goes like this:

Because how else can it? She rails and spits and hates and _loves_ , and still it rolls over her, as feather light as those wrists that once bore chains. As inexorable as that melodic laugh, those sad, searching eyes.

It goes like this, because she’s done searching, isn’t she. She’s quiet, now. She’s ready.

So it ends like this:

_________________

_Where is your blood?_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_You’ve always known.  
_ _________________

She comes to their side on her own.

They’ve gotten used to it, the way Basira’s partitioned the cottage again. She’s less outwardly vehement about it, sure, but they welcome the widest berth available under such domestic circumstances. 

Martin does, anyway. Jon is another story altogether, an unreadable query of confounding proportions as he props himself as near to Daisy as he can without inciting Basira’s evil eye. 

It’s all very… odd, at first, hardly the atmosphere Martin would have expected following the burial of another child in their backyard. As well the… inevitability of Daisy’s slow and obvious decline in faculties weighs none too kindly on the general vitality of the cottage and their party, but he can’t bloody well bring it up, can he? The mere thought of that confrontation makes him mentally recoil. A lot of things are making him do that, actually, not just Daisy, but she’s the most immediate scapegoat, and anything to keep his anxiety from bubbling over and burning Jon is very much appreciated, indeed.

Since that last, fateful trip to the town, Jon has been entirely too wistful, afflicted of a sudden serenity that ratchets Martin’s alarm bells up to “deafening roar” but he can’t pin down why. Everything feels wrong again, and there is no reason for it. They still eat and laugh and worry over supplies and take brief stints into the hills, marveling at the steel grey sky cracking through with the occasional blue, with an errant glare from a shriveling eye.

“I still don’t get it,” says Martin, of the world set to such rights that he cannot believe are yet for him. He laces a note of interrogation into it, trying to goad what he can from Jon, because he can’t bring himself to say it again, to offer over his eyes when things are - are _good_. Good without him. Without them having to make some grand and agonizing sacrifice.

And he’s not stupid. He does not for a moment accept that the world has healed itself of fear without some awesome intervention, or that Magnus has gone into permanent hibernation. There are still rifts and rents, moments when Jon stares off into nothing, his good eye glazing over with a glimmer too familiar to be anything that is his own decision. There haven’t been any episodes, as it were, and the world is so docile. And part of Martin wants to think Jon and Daisy performed some miracle together, that their defiance in the face of death and suffering, itself, stitched the bleeding universe.

He’s not stupid, just a bit too guilty of hope.

Because he’s always been good at that, hasn’t he. Compartmentalizing, sifting through the muck and mire of his tedious emotions and packing them away in neat little drawers of denial, till he’s ready to yank them out and cast their contents to the floor, dash them wide open for his pain and perusal, so he can do it all over again. And again. 

And he’s already done that, hasn’t he? Already torn everything out and apart and scoured it with a fine tooth comb. There’s no reason he should not be inundated with relief and elation. No reason that he shouldn’t be focusing all his attention on Daisy, because _bloody hell, Blackwood, she’s going to die. She’s going to fucking die. Jon’s going to take her statement, and who knows what the hell that might do, but there’s no stopping it, and everything’s so strange, and I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know -_

Except there is a reason, and he cannot begin to fathom what it could possibly be.

So he doesn’t. He just doesn’t. He’s good at that. He’s safe, with that. 

_________________________

_And soon, there will be stars.  
_______________________  
_

It isn’t raining - hasn’t for quite some time - but it especially refuses to do so now, on this most excruciating of days, as plump and perfect slats of sun coax Daisy’s eyes open and tug her tears loose in dutiful rivulets.

She’d been waiting it out, the last of it. The snare drum whispers that still plagued her dreams. That _were_ her dreams. But she hasn’t dreamt for two nights. And there’s no echo, anymore, not with this morning. It’s just her beside Basira, who sleeps so soundly. In their bed so soft with remembered sighs and cries and love and bereavement. 

Just her, and the courage in her breast, and the will that is finally all her own.

It’s her, and she’s ready.

-

She finds Jon first, because she’s amused by the allusion to a bookend. First, and then last, because her chest is rotting open with relief, her bones these riddled-through things of anemic scaffolding, and he knows all about that, doesn’t he. He knows what it is to be empty. He knows what it is to share that.

He’s coming down the stairs as she’s fidgeting by the kitchen table, as she’s trying valiantly to make it look like that’s all she’s doing. That she's not bracing herself against a chair, not gasping for breath, not utterly depleted by the monumental task it took to shuffle out here. Not in awe of her own weakness, where muscle and sinew and blood and _hunt_ once sang, and now she must find the cadence of her quiescence, the foreign calm within herself.

No, not yet. Not yet for him, and not ever for anyone else. 

“Hiya,” she croaks, and when he smiles, it does not hurt.

“Let me help,” he says, which does.

She winces. She nods. 

“What about you?” She hisses, as he guides her into the chair.

“What about me,” he does not ask. 

He’s been so wary about that, an unnecessary precaution, she’s sure, but a politesse she, nonetheless, can oblige. Neither of them know how far the roots were bedded down, nor if she was able to get them all, snap them from the soil of his soul and leave him tilled open and fresh and raw. She hasn’t even seen behind the bandages, only recalls the bloody hole that healed too quickly, that made her _growl_ that it hadn’t worked. 

It did, though. Or else they wouldn’t be here. Or else she wouldn’t want this.

She wants to see. She wants to ask. They always do look so fresh, the bandages, but she can’t imagine it’s been an easy task keeping Martin at bay. But these are mostly passing concerns, because - she - _wants_.

_Did you get all that?_ She thinks, instead, a private little joke for her sake, because it’s not the blood that drives her appetite, nor is it his compulsion. It’s just her own damn curiosity. 

How perfect.

He continues not staring at her, so she’s forced to concede, _relieved_ to believe that he is fully himself.

“I’ve missed you,” she says, without any weight or sorrow or regret. Just a statement. Just the start. “Wish we could’ve had more time, y’know?”

He blinks at her, till the hazel turns up in a wan smile at the corners, adorned in crows feet that she’ll never get to see the proper depths of. And, if they’ve done this right, neither will he.

“I do,” he says, and she snorts, because he’s knelt beside the chair, one arm propped on the back of it, so it’s not the _exact_ image, but it’s close enough.

“You proposing t’me, Sims?”

He blinks, and her heart flutters when another smile works his mouth open, relaxing the grim lines either side of his nose.

“I’m afraid we’re both a bit too late for beards,” he says.

“Yeah?” She nudges his knee with her shin. “Guess you’re right. Maid of honor?”

“Only if you’re doing pastels.”

“Oof, pass,” Daisy laughs. And then coughs. And keeps coughing, till there’s nothing left in her lungs.

“ _Shit_.”

If that woke Basira… 

But no. No. The world doesn’t have that for her, won’t betray her anymore; it is only for her and Jon, these wretched, lovely moments.

“Easy,” offers Jon, and part of her wants to spit a snide remark - _No shit, Sims_ \- and that’s _good_ , but she also hasn’t the strength for it, so she settles on a trite _sniff_ that earns her a roll of the eyes.

“Still better’n your lungs, probably,” she quips.

“I haven’t smoked in three years,” he counters poignantly.

It’s so, fucking _easy_.

“Good,” she grins. She grimaces. She coughs again, like some goddamn waif out of Dickens, but Jon offers no such lofty solace, no grandiose speech of resolve and character. 

He just sits there, bleeding in his own way; a pantomime of devotion. 

“It won’t hurt,” he says at length, when it’s all died down again and she can find a ragged inhale or two to steady her bones.

She exhales, as much as a laugh as she’s willing to risk.

“Yes it will.”

A pause. No more beats.

He tries again, but, well, he’s not really trying, is he.

“Only if you want it to.”

“Maybe I do.”

_No you don’t._

“I do.”

Now _he_ laughs, the tables always so recklessly turned when they get around to nattering. She should be on her knees, too, pleading right beside him, but they’re past that, aren’t they? Everything’s bedding down, her winter an impending hush.

“I’ll give you what you need,” he’s saying, tiger-eyed and tongue tied up in atonement. “But I won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah,” she lolls to one side, her head swimming nicely with his lovely baritone murmur all warm and soft between her thoughts.

He catches her, an arm around the waist, right before she tumbles out of the chair.

“I know,” she says, because he’s all blurry through unwanted tears, and she’s sick of their ineffectuality.

He looks at her, really _looks_ , and she wonders if this is how it’s going to feel. If it’ll be like what Elia - what _Magnus_ stole against her will. If it’s going to hurt Jon _back_ . If he has enough strength to do this. If her statement will help him hang on just a little longer for Martin, for Basira. If maybe there’s a cosmic punchline, and she’ll be the last laugh, and he’ll keep on going, and so will the rest of them, and maybe _that’s_ what she was getting at all along. 

She snorts. Because that’s selfish and ignorant and inane and - oh

Oh he’s… kissing her. 

A brush of lips to her brow, one, two drips of heat on her skin where he’s crying, too. Unthinking, she reaches up and cups her palm over his eye, whispers “ _No_ ,” because it’s not right, not right now.

He shudders, exhales, and leans into the touch. 

“F’you bloody start,” she mutters, “then I won’t be able t’stop.”

He lets go of her waist, straightening up, and as she closes her eyes, he nestles his chin atop her head.

“Is that so bad.” 

“Could be,” her voice trembles, but she makes no effort to hide that fact. It’s all for him.

“Suppose so,” he sighs and the warmth of it ruffles her hair, makes her tortured spine go gooey.

“But let’s not let it, yeah?” His arms rest around her shoulders, now, his palms kneading between the blades, hunched and dull.

“Yeah,” she breathes back. “Yeah, okay.” 

And pulls him in, properly, a burst of strength providing just enough effort to press him flush against her, mouth to his chest where the ribs are amiss and she could taste his heart if she wanted to.

She doesn’t. It must be a miracle.

Or perhaps the next thing is, most of all. When she shifts, smushing her face into his shirt before turning aside for a breath. And there’s Basira, not angry or betrayed or even _sad_. Just waiting. For her turn. For the end, maybe. But always, always, waiting for her.

“I - I’m sorry,” she says, a second too late from when Daisy catches her gaze. 

There’s no time left for pretense, for flowery interludes and hours of heartache; she lets go of Jon in an instant, reaches out, says, “Just get over here,” and Basira does, stumbling half in a daze. 

“You were gone,” she says, when she arrives on their side of this, though Jon’s taken a respectful step to the left, to permit Basira her somewhat dramatic entrance.

“M’here,” Daisy says, as if that needs clarification, but it feels honest, feels right for Basira’s sake, especially as she crumbles to her knees. A far better fit for it, too. A lovelier image.

“Still here,” she reiterates, taking great pains to keep her hand from shaking as she strokes Basira’s face, guides her forward, kisses her.

“And - and what about when you’re not.”

“Don’t know.”

“No?”

“No.”

_Pause._ _Beat._

“Guess I’ll - guess I’ll just have to work that out on my own, then.”

“I know you will.”

Daisy pulls back. From the corner of her eye, she catches Jon disappearing back up the stairs. She wants to call after him, wants to tell him to be careful, to be mindful, to not let this take him too soon. But she doesn’t know what he’s done with their time between so many consequences. She doesn’t know how much he may have accepted or denied what they did. That is not hers to have. It’s all up to him, now.

  
  
  
  
  


_______________________________________________

She’s beautiful beside the fire, skin aglow in obsidian relief, her tears like veins of ore tracking, twisting, scoring down her cheeks, but never sullying her stoic expression, the stoneset intensity of her grief, and her relief.

Jon watches her, a thousand shards of sadness coursing through his mind, Daisy’s statement a swirling eddy, the hurricane of her story sweet like bad wine and cigarette smoke, the wrong earthiness of petrol, and notes of heather and cedar, though that could just be what they’ve supplemented on the pyre. 

She’s beautiful. And, somehow, she does not break.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It went like this:

The rest of the day, and then the night. They talked for hours, for all of it, everything they’d never shared, forgotten memories of childhood, embarrassing moments from college, and then uni. The agony of their affections for each other, the taboo of their work, the dangers of closeness. And then the end, and fighting together, losing and then finding each other, recounting the reunion 

“What did you talk about,” Basira asked at one point. 

“A lot,” answered Daisy.

That was it. Jon would share in his own time, and she would protect him to her last breath.

Basira did not press matters. She understood her place between them.

  
  


It went like this:

They made love. It was exhausting, it was everything. It was sigh after sigh, painting pleasure over that taut, brittle body, relaxing the bones and blood and bitterness, one last ecstasy of closeness and comfort.

They talked more after, things of little concern Basira will hold in her heart forever. They talked until they slept, and neither of them dreamed.

  
  


It went like this:

Morning, and Daisy wasn’t moving. 

Wasn’t gone, wasn’t - wasn’t… 

Just hadn’t the strength, had only enough for a thin smile, a ghost of a kiss.

And a “ _please_ ” for everything that was left in her world.

  
  


It went like this:

Too fast. Too little left for them. Barely two more hours salvaged, barely enough time for any of them to wrap their heads around it. Till they were all clustered around the bed, hands all tangled, tears steadily shed. Distances kept for Basira’s sake, but Daisy wanted them close. All of them. 

  
  
  
  


And for her end, her peace, made at last, it went like this, with Basira’s heart in her hands and Jon’s voice in her head.

It went, finally, like this:

  
  
  
  
  


_Where is your blood?_

_…  
_ _I don’t know._

_Can you find it for me?_

_I - I can try._

_Will you?_

_Yes._

_…_

_…_

_Do you love it?_

_I did, once. I think._

_What about now?_

_I don’t know._

_Can you hate it?_

_I want to._

_But -_

_…_

_Daisy?_

_I’m scared. I want to, but I’m so scared._

_I know._

_Were you?_

_…_

_Please, Jon._

_I was terrified._

_Are you still?_

_Every goddamn second._

_…are you bloody laughing?_

_I - I’m sorry, I can’t help it._

_Don’t you cry, either._

_Sorry._

_…_

_…_

_You were right._

_About?_

_It doesn’t hurt._

_I know. I know._

_No I mean, it’s different._

_How?_

_It’s quieter, I think._ _  
_ _…_ _  
_ _Did he scream?_

_I… don’t remember, actually._

_I think that’s better. He doesn’t deserve to be._

_No._

_…_

_…_

_…_

~~_I love y - Thank y-_ ~~

_Oh._

_Ah…_

_…_ _  
_ _I - me, too. Um. About you, I mean._

_…_

_…_

_Christ, I’m going to miss you._

_Daisy -_

_Don’t, Jon, just don’t._

_…_ _  
_ _Okay._

_…_

_I’m sorry._

_Me, too._

_I wish there was more time._

_Maybe. Just don’t you go wasting what I did._

_Never._

_Good._

_…_

_Jon?_

_Yes?_

_Take care of them, okay? Don’t - don’t hurt them. It’s not worth it._

_…  
_ _I wish I could hug you._

_You can._

_No. Not anymore._

_I mean… I guess not? After?_

_I’d like that._

_You go right ahead, then._

_Thank you._

_Basira, too, please. And Martin. He’s a good bloke._

_I’ll do my level best, officer._

_Fuck off, Sims._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_…Jon?_

_Yes?_

_…_ _  
_ _I - I can’t hear it._

_Are you afraid?_

_…_ _  
_ _No._

_Are you upset?_

_No - no, Jon, I’m -_

_Are you ready._

_…_

_Daisy -_

_Yes. Yes, I’m - I am, Jon. I think I’m ready._

_…_

_Jon?_

_I’m here. Sorry, I’m here._

_I know._

_…  
_ _Are_ **_you_ ** _ready?_

_I… am. That’s what scares me._

_Let it, then._

_What?_

_Let it._

_Sorry I -_

_When was the last time you felt that? Real fear? Your_ **_own_ ** _fear, Jon, not someone else’s._

_…_ _  
_ _I don’t know._

_Did you feel it when you first saw him?_

_I think?_

_And when you took him in?_

_…yes._

_And Helen? Oliver? The Hunter? Freya?_

_I - I don’t -_

_When he took over. Took your tongue and mind, made you see and say those awful things._

_Daisy I -_

_Did you like it?_

_…_

_Jon._

_Yes. Yes I - I did._

_Good._

_What?_

_Because that was you._

_I don’t -_

_It’s human to fear, Jon. That’s all it is. That’s all you are. You were human when you faced him. Human when you sacrificed yourself. Human when you took those statements. Human when you found Freya, when we buried her, when you couldn’t watch me do the same to her brother. He tried to get that from you, but you hated that, too. You hated what he made you enjoy._

_…_

_…_

_Daisy._

_Yes._

_I didn’t feel scared._

_When._

_When you t- when you killed him._

_How did you feel?_

_…_ _  
_ _Grateful. Agonizing. Relieved._

_That’s human, too._

_Is it?_

_I think so. And I think that’s enough to count for something._

_Huh. I guess it is._

_So let’s be scared together, how about. Let’s not be alone in this._

_I’d… I’d like that. Thank you._

_Anytime._

_…  
_ _You know, I think this was supposed to be profound._

_Isn’t it?_

_Not like I was expecting. The others were… different._

_Guess I’m just special._

_I guess so._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_Are you still -_

_Yes._

_Even after all that?_

_Especially._

_Okay._

_…_

_…_

_I really do love you, Jon. I hope you know that. I - I hope you’ll keep that._

_I do - I will. I… I really love you, too, Daisy._

_Take care of yourself, yeah? Long as you can._

_I’ll try._

_Good._

_…_

_…_

_Daisy._

_Jon?_

_Are you ready to show me?_

_Yes. I think I finally am._

_…_

_A - ask me, Jon. Please._

_…_ _  
_ _Goodbye, Daisy._

_Goodbye, Jon._

~~_beat_ ~~

~~_beat_ ~~

  
  


~~_beat_ ~~

  
  
  


_Daisy._

_Yes._

_Where is your blood._

~~_Beat._ ~~

~~_Beat._ ~~

  
  


~~_Beat._ ~~

  
  
  


_It’s - It’s here, Jon._

  
  
  


~~_beat_ ~~

  
  
  
  


~~_beat_ ~~

  
  
  
  
  
  


~~_beat_ ~~

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_I have it._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_be-_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_I have it._

She went like this, under duress of nothing, beholden to no one, human and hurting and scared and consoled and so, so loved.

She went like this, quietly on a nameless, dateless morning, with the sun cresting a cloud-bank of shut tight eyes, with the closeness of three souls so very like her own, and so different in their own sufferings. As she found the pulse again within her, though, that stuttering stomp of a human heart, as she hushed it to sleep, as she slipped away, there were no strangers amidst the four of them. They ached as a singular entity, a crescendo in harmony of hurt. They rose. They fell. 

It went like this.

And they gave Basira her space, for grief and for peace, Jon resolving to tell her later of Daisy’s revelations. Not the whole story, no; that’s a private matter, but at least some of it. At least the parts that won’t scar the most. Those, he will keep, he will protect, and when it’s his turn, they will die softly and safely, just as Daisy wanted. Just as she did, too.

It went like this.

There was no burial. That would be wholly wrong. And there’s already so many souls in the garden. It would not have been right to bury her with the ones she saved. It would not have been right to bury her, at all.

So they didn’t.

It went like this:

Leaving Basira to mourn her, to love her in the ways Jon and Martin could not.

Like this:

A strange and disconsolate dance around the house, the two of them unsure of how to proceed, _where_ to proceed, wandering apart, but always coming back together, because their minds share the same grief. 

_What if this was us._

It’s not an exact translation, between the two of them - much as they love one another, they are still victims of themselves, slaves to their biases, and Jon still toils in ways yet spared from Martin. But they’re on their way, aren’t they? _He_ is. What Daisy did for him, what he decided in the hills when they communed their peace together, he’ll tell Martin soon. Will _show_ him. He has to. He must.

But… not today. And certainly not now.

It went like this:

For another hour, then two. They slogged through the motions of tea and toast, stomaching about half as much of either, the tea dry and burnt, the toast similarly so. 

It went like this:

Basira emerging at about noon, and neither of them had moved from the kitchen, so they were all she saw after seeing only Daisy. Only the quiet, slack sleep on her face. The rest, the contentment. They looked at her with such sadness, and such patience.

“I need -”

She started, and then stopped, because she wasn’t sure what she needed. A hug, maybe. That sure would be nice. 

Then, “Let us help,” from Jon, who stood but made no move for her, only made his offer and waited with ever impossible patience for her response.

And how could she not? How could she deny the only two people left for her?

The answer was simple. And she was so grateful.

  
  


So it went like this, in solemn silence, save a few suggestions here and there, with tears and pitying looks she welcomed like long gone friends.

_We can spare this much petrol, I think._

_I know I saw an axe somewhere. I can chop more wood._

_Here, try and eat something._

_It’s okay. It’s okay. Take your time. I’m here._

  
  


It went like this, until a pyre had been erected in the back garden beside Freya and her brother, and then the pace changed. Became erratic and stutter stop, a disbelief of occurrence, a waltz in three count to an unheard funeral knell. A beat just could not be found.

Until final tears had been bled and kisses taken from cold, still slightly smiling lips. 

Until Daisy lay atop that which would not bury her. 

Until the earth that could not claim her was scorched and blackened.

  
  
  


It went like this, because to have done so otherwise would have given too much space for regret, for panic, for beating fists and rolling sobs. For the hatred and _loathing_ of such an unselfish act. 

  
  
  


It goes like this, because it’s for Daisy. For her release. Because theirs was always an astounding and odd affection. 

Because Basira’s heart swells with the flames, the embers that emulate galaxies in their airborne contrition. Because the ash afterwards is soft and staining on her hands, and she doesn’t know what is Daisy and what is cedar, what is ruined earth and what is blister and bruise because it’s still too hot to touch. Because she doesn’t care.

  
  
  


And it goes and goes and goes, some of her stolen by the gentle wind that buffets along the evening’s arrival, some of her indistinguishable from soil and charred grass. 

It doesn’t matter. For Basira’s grief is an invulnerable thing, an anchor gouging through her ribs and staying her beside the smoldering cenotaph, immovable, inconsolable, a completion of loss and devotion. Her heart so wholly broken, so whenever she decides to pick up her pieces, she can make it anew, entirely. 

It’s what Daisy would have wanted, she thinks. And, if nothing else, she will live her life in honor of that.

For now, though, she relishes the wound, the novelty of such an acute pain, of blood not and never spilled.

  
  
  


And it goes that she wants to tell them to leave, to go back inside, but she can’t quite bring herself to muster enough courage, to seek the loneliness she feels so sweetly. And besides, she doubts they’d listen. They loved her, too, after all, in their own ways.

  
  
  


And it goes that, abruptly, there are arms around her, Jon kneeling by her left, guiding her into a hug.

“She asked me to,” he murmurs, each word strained, though by what, it’s hard to tell, the layers of mourning rife with so many iterations. 

“I had a dream,” she says, apropos of nothing and everything and all that is her anguish. “With you, and her. And - and Freya, too. You told me - told me it hurts, if you don’t say goodbye.”

Jon squeezes her tighter. The tears come thickly, unblemished, and beautiful.

“You lied, Jon.”

He doesn’t let go, but presses his mouth to the top of her head, exhaling warmth that roars through her skull like an inferno. 

“Do you hurt, Basira.”

She nods, heaves in a stuttered breath, and falls apart in his embrace.

_So much._

_So very, very much._

  
  
  
  
____________

It goes like this.

For now and now and now.

And the fire smolders till morning. 

And the ash stains black and grey. 

And there is no red to be seen.

And it is quiet.

And it is so, so quiet.  
_________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW:
> 
> \- implied sexual content  
> \- suicidal ideation  
> \- mentioned child death  
> \- major character death
> 
> Titled modified from "All Is Well (It's Only Blood)" by Radical Face


End file.
